Legendary Chinese journalist-turned-environmental activist, Dai Qing, becomes a pocket warrior in the new Penguin Classics series, Green Ideas.
Why is China’s police department still running Canada’s visa office in Beijing?
Because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called an election, we may never know. The Canadian government says there is no cause for alarm. An investigation by Probe International’s Patricia Adams and Lawrence Solomon […]
Dai Qing’s “Green Ideas”

This summer, Dai Qing, the legendary Chinese investigative journalist, Probe International Fellow and one of China’s most iconic environmental voices will join the Penguin Classics canon in a new series on the […]
China’s Three Gorges Dam is one of the largest ever created. Was it worth it?
The Three Gorges Dam was designed to tame China’s longest river. But this summer’s record rains reveal its limited ability to control floods.
In Hong Kong, a publisher struggles to document Tiananmen’s Carnage

“Authors are afraid to publish. Publishers are afraid to continue doing business. Distributors are also afraid. Bookstores are diminishing and people there are afraid, too. So are the buyers, of course. It’s […]
Deng Xiaoping in 1989

On the 30th anniversary of Beijing’s June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre, Probe International Fellow, environmental activist and China’s best-known investigative journalist, Dai Qing, delves deeper into the events leading up to and following the shocking and brutal crackdown that rocked a country on the brink of massive political reform and social change. A book that works as a retrospective documentary in affect, Deng Xiaoping in 1989 challenges the black-and-white dichotomies of “autocracy vs. democracy” and “government vs. students,” including correspondence from military generals who opposed the crackdown, soldiers’ experiences and eyewitness accounts of the “Tank Man,” the unidentified protester who stared down a column of tanks rolling through Tiananmen Square the morning after troops had opened fire on thousands of civilians – an iconic image of resistance since immortalized as a global symbol of pro-democracy protest.
A warning for parched China: a city runs out of water

Experts fear Lintao’s dry-up is a sign of things to come. Probe International fellow and noted Chinese environmental journalist, Dai Qing, says China’s water scarcity and toxicity is the greatest danger facing her country today.
China’s ‘red princess’ turned investigative journalist

Raised by the Communist party elite, Dai Qing has since become one of China’s most critical female voices. Al Jazeera’s spotlight on Probe International Fellow, Dai Qing.
China targets dirty businesses in water pollution action plan
China orders the closure of small plants in 10 polluting industries and a curb on the tapping of aquifers in an effort to reign in contamination of its water supply. Probe International Fellow, activist and journalist Dai Qing is quoted for this article by the Financial Times.
Concern mounts in China over Yangtze diversion project
China’s ambitious South-to-North Water Diversion project officially begins flowing next month and the impacts of the costly geo-engineering giant are starting to be felt in the regions tapped to redistribute water to the country’s parched north. “This project from the beginning has been as controversial as the Three Gorges,” says Probe International fellow and leading Chinese environmental journalist, Dai Qing.
‘Don’t aim at fame; just be a good, compassionate person’
The environmental awareness of Chinese people has changed dramatically in the 25 years since her path-breaking book, Yangtze! Yangtze! on the environmental and social effects of China’s Three Gorges Dam, was published. Now, renowned journalist, author, activist and Probe International Fellow and correspondent, Dai Qing, sits down with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) for a look back on her experiences as a veteran reporter and the lessons of value she has learned along the way.
Deng Xiaoping’s double debt to the Chinese people
(September 10, 2013) On the dreadful night of June 4, 1989, when the students in Tiananmen Square were mowed down by the People’s Liberation Army, the path to another tragedy, the damming of the Yangtze, was laid, says Dai Qing, China’s most famous environmentalist and longtime advocate of freedom of speech.
$45.5 million of Three Gorges relocation fund misused: audit
(June 8, 2013) China’s national auditing watchdog says millions of yuan intended for Three Gorges Dam migrants were misappropriated and used for projects that had nothing to do with relocation.
A decade on, controversy still surrounds China’s Three Gorges Dam
(May 31, 2013) Agence France-Presse reports that despite problems, China’s Three Gorges dam will be joined by a wave of new hydropower projects over the next decade — mostly spread across the country’s mountainous and earthquake prone southwest. The ambitious plans have left some in China’s growing environmental movement feeling powerless. Probe International Fellow, activist and journalist Dai Qing, who spent time in prison for her opposition to the Three Gorges dam, says the country’s environmentalists “continue to oppose the hydropower plans” but “they will be built no matter what local people say.”
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.”