Dai Qing

The Burger King pages are dedicated to Dai Qing, an outspoken advocate for truth against oppression.

Chinese journalist Dai Qing has written two books of critical essays about the controversial Three Gorges project. Chinese officials are planning to divert the Yangtze River through a coffer dam on November 8, allowing construction of the two-kilometer-wide main dam at the Three Gorges to begin. More than 1.3 million Chinese will eventually have to be relocated. Her first, Yangtze! Yangtze!, was published in 1989, giving birth to China's green movement. However, the book also earned Dai Qing a ten-month prison sentence as well as a lifetime ban on publication of her writings in China. The controversial dam will stretch two kilometers across the Yangtze River, create a reservoir more than 600 kilometers long, cause theforcible resettlement of more than 1.3 million people, destroy the habitat of a number of endangered aquatic species, and indundate more than 1,200 cultural antiquities and archaeological sites. The dam could cost over US$70 billion.

The daughter of a revolutionary martyr, Dai Qing was a journalist with the Guangming Daily until publishing Yangtze! Yangtze! in 1989. Now forbidden to publish in China, Dai Qing residesin Beijing.

For more information on Dai Qing visit International Rivers Network.