Category: Articles by Dai Qing

Never-ending, hidden rules

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.”

Dai Qing: On The Completion of the Three Gorges Project

(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.

Dai Qing: Liu Xia’s Grand List

(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.

Dai Qing: People’s power

(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.

The expensive Three Gorges flood control project

(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.”

Huang Wanli’s predictions for the Three Gorges come to pass

(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.

The Story of the Dahe Dam

(January 20, 2005) A fascinating, detailed account of the years-long struggle for redress pursued by thousands of people who were plunged deeper into poverty by the construction of the Dahe dam. Many of the farmers uprooted for that dam, built 30 years ago on a Yangtze tributary in what is now Chongqing municipality, are being moved again for the Three Gorges project.