Abstract: In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Xijiang river basin was far away from the political center of the central plains, but it had an important strategic position. Since the Ming Dynasty, a large number of military defensive settlements were built, which not only had the commonness in line with the defense principles, but also had characters of local settlements closely related to the water system in southwest China. The types of settlements were studied by the typology and comparative methods, and the two types of site-location directions of settlements, simultaneously the five aspects of settlement forms were discussed. Finally, the defensive strategies at five levels of military defensive settlements in the Xijiang river basin were summarized. Numerous military defensive settlements in the Xijiang river basin reflected a multi-level and multi-directional defensive strategy from the site selection to the settlement form. Each settlement guarding the key joints of amphibious network systems. According to differently congenital and acquired environments and conditions, using multi-level defensive strategies comprenensively and combining the pringiples of enclosures, mazes, agglomeration, and etc at the macro level with military derensive facilities at the micro level including city walls, city gates, moats, enclosures for defence outside a city gate, barbettes, blockhouse, lookouts, shooting holes, and etc, and a rich and colorful, distinctive settlement defense form was established, which had a stronger disaster-prevention capability.