Probe International Fellow, activist and journalist Dai Qing has been speaking out against the Three Gorges Dam since the 1980s. She published Yangtze! Yangtze! in 1989, a book of essays highlighting the concerns about the environmental and social effects of the dam, followed by The River Dragon has Come in 1998. Though Dai Qing faces constant harassment by Chinese authorities and is forbidden to publish in China, she has chosen to remain in Beijing where she continues to fight for freedom of the press, government accountability, and an open debate over the Three Gorges dam. She has been honoured with Fellowships from Harvard, Columbia, and the Australian National University, with the International PEN Award for Freedom, and the Goldman Environmental Prize.
“No government should regulate birth, period.” Probe International Fellow and correspondent, Dai Qing, discusses China’s population-control policies over the years in this opinion piece for The New York Times.
Famed Chinese journalist and environmentalist Dai Qing, on her 70th birthday, reflects on the words of Confucius, who said: “When you’re 70, do as you please, as long as it doesn’t break the rules.” Dai, however, decides she was born 2,500 years too late. “I embody the cultural atmosphere of the ‘People’s Republic,'” she says. “With all its hidden rules.”
(April 7, 2011) Dai Qing, Chinese investigative journalist and Probe International Fellow, delivered the following speech about the Three Gorges Dam project in November 2010 while on a speaking tour in British Columbia, Canada. In her address, she reports that the problems predicted by dam critics published in her books, “Yangtze! Yangtze!” and “The River Dragon Has Come!,” are now coming true.
(December 14, 2010) Noted Chinese dissident and Probe International Fellow Dai Qing reflects on China’s decision to create it own peace prize.
(December 3, 2010) A speech given by Probe International Fellow and noted Chinese dissident writer, Dai Qing, at the University of Toronto’s Munk Center on China’s so-called “rise” and the consequences of its “economic miracle” for the citizens of China and its environment. This speech was given on October 26, 2010.
(November 24, 2010) Dai Qing, outspoken critic of the Chinese government and banned writer, gets her wish. A deserving activist from Liu Xia’s List heads to the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, and she heads home.
(November 7, 2010) Writing in the National Post, Chinese dissident writer and Probe International Fellow Dai Qing says China’s much-celebrated “rise” is no rise at all.
(November 5, 2010) Statement by dissident writer Dai Qing, calling on Chinese officials to release Liu Xiaobo and announcing that she will attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, even as the Chinese government pursues a crackdown on the country’s critics and activists.
(October 14, 2010) Dai Qing, one of China’s foremost writers, recently wrote in Radio Free Asia about a dinner held in honour of Xie Chaoping, the author of “The Great Relocation” who was detained in August at his Beijing home on charges of “illegal activities” and held until September 17 in a Shaanxi Province jail.
(August 19, 2010) As the Chinese people fret these days about our unusual weather, and about floods in the north and south, and in the Yangtze valley in particular, a Web posting attracted widespread attention. Using material from the official media, such as Xinhua and CCTV, and highlighting their headlines in particular, the authors accused the Three Gorges project authority of “boasting.”
(June 12, 2010) Huang Wanli, renowned hydraulics engineer and Tsinghua University lecturer, first voiced his opposition to the large-scale damming of rivers by opposing the construction of the Sanmenxia dam in 1957. In the 1980s he became a vocal opponent of the Three Gorges project and contributed to Yangtze! Yangtze!, the important critique of the dam compiled by China’s celebrated investigative journalist, Dai Qing. Now, as the Three Gorges dam is beset by monumental operational problems, Huang Wanli’s prescient analysis helps explain why it was a mistake to build the biggest dam in the world. Read his 1993 interview with Dai Qing.
(February 14, 2008) Probe International Fellow Dai Qing lauds Canadian documentary Up the Yangtze for revealing the human cost of the Three Gorges dam.
(September 5, 2007) In June 1966, at the start of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards set about ransacking houses all over Beijing. One of their targets was the philosopher and former political activist Zhang Dongsun.
(January 19, 2005) ‘To learn more about what goes on behind the scenes in China, this book about the ruinous consequences of one small dam is an excellent place to start,’ Dai Qing writes in her introduction to the English translation of Ying Xing’s groundbreaking work.
(January 9, 2004) Journalist Dai Qing interviews Guo Laixi, an eminent geographer who took part in the Chinese feasibility study for the Three Gorges dam but became so alarmed about the project’s potential impacts that he refused to sign the study team’s final report.
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