by Clifford Coonan
The Independent
January 30, 2001

Environmentalists view the Three Gorges dam in China, the world’s biggest, as a monstrous natural catastrophe waiting to unleash itself on the hundreds of millions of people who live near the Yangtze river. The Chinese government is fiercely proud of the dam, which is due to open in a few weeks, saying it will stop the river flooding all the time, provide much-needed clean hydroelectric power and give ships from booming coastal cities such as Shanghai better access to central China. … The most famous opponent of the dam in China is the energetic environmental activist and journalist Dai Qing. She opposes the dam because of the lack of public debate about such an enormous project, the fact that the warnings of independent analysts have been ignored and also because she sees it as a huge waste of money. Her book criticising the project, Yangtze! Yangtze! earned her 10 months in a maximum security prison, during which she was threatened with the death sentence. “Our efforts may look weak and limited in comparison with the government’s strong and thunderous media campaign. Whether history proves the project to be a success or a failure, the fact remains that we were simply a group of journalists who took our profession very seriously. We tried to do what we felt was right at a time when we were needed,” Dai said. … Read the full story (2006 reprint).