The River Dragon Has Come! Three Gorges Dam and the Fate of China's Yangtze River and Its People

This is a collection of essays exploring the deep-rooted problems presented by the Three Gorges dam project that the Chinese government are trying to disguise or suppress, brought together by Dai Qing, an investigative journalist, at the risk of her own freedom.

In the ongoing courageous struggle of a relatively small group of Chinese to prevent the completion of the Three Gorges Dam in China, Dai Qing is the outspoken leader whose eloquent voice is always heard despite threats and intimidation by the Chinese authorities to silence it. Dai Qing, an investigative journalist and author with a wide audience in China and abroad, compiled this book of essays and field reports assessing the impact of the Three Gorges megadam now under construction at Sandouping in China's Hubei province at great risk to her own freedom. This book is an effort to prevent history from repeating itself ten-fold (a reference to the great floods in 1975 during which over 60 dams collapsed and at least 100,000 people lost their lives) if the 39 billion cubic metres of water in the Three Gorges reservoir ever escapes by natural or man-made catastrophes. These comprehensive essays reveal the deep rooted problems presented by the Three Gorges project that the government is attempting to disguise or suppress. The main concerns are population resettlement and human rights, the irreversible environmental and economic impact, the loss of cultural antiquities and historical sites, military considerations, and hidden dam disasters from the past. Opponents of the dam are attempting to kill the project or at least reduce the size of the megadam now planned to be the biggest, most expensive and, incidentally, the most hazardous of all hydro-electric projects on this planet.

The Three Gorges Project - a Symbol of Uncontrolled Development in the Late 20th Century, Dai Qing; A Profile of Dams in China, Shui Fu; The World's Most Catastrophic Dam Failures - the August 1975 Collapse of the Banqiao and Shimantan Dams, Yi Si; Discussing Population Resettlement with Li Boning - 1 - General Plan for Population Resettlement, Li Boning, 2 - Is Developmental Resettlement Possible?, Qi Ren; The Environmental Impacts of Resettlement in the Three Gorges Project, Chen Guojie; What are the Three Gorges Resettlers Thinking?, Ding Qigang; A Survey of Resettlement in Badong County, Hubei Province, Ding Qigang and Zheng Jiaqin; Resettlement in the Xin'an River Power Station Project, Mou Mo and Cai Wenmei; The Danger to Historical Relics and Cultural Antiquities In and Around the Three Gorges Area - Interviews with the Director of the National History Museum of China, Yu Weichao and Dai Qing; A Lamentation for the Yellow River - the Three Gate Gorge Dam Sanmenxia, Shang Wei; Water Pollution in the Three Gorges Reservoir, Jin Hui; Military Perspectives on the Three Gorges Project, Da Bing; Epilogue - the New Golden Triangle of China, Richard Hayman; Appendices: Acknowledgements from "General Plan for Population Resettlement", Li Boning; Sediment Problems at the Three Gorges Dam, Luna B. Leopold; The Three Gorges Dam and the Fate of China's Southern Heritage, Elizabeth Childs-Johnson and Lawrence R. Sullivan; Priority Level Cultural Antiquities in the Three Gorges Area; Archaeological Sites to be Inundated in 1997 by the Construction of the Three Gorges Dam; Letter to Jiang Zemin Concerning Archaeological Sites.