A Chinese intellectual outcast and a resounding environmental critic of the Three Gorges dam, Dai Qing, has traveled to the United States carrying her new book detailing the impact the Three Gorges Dam will have on people, the environment and the economy.

The River Dragon Has Come is a collection of critical essays that most notably describes a series of dam failures that have plagued China.

Dai’s quest is to rally the international community to stop what will be the largest hydroelectric dam built in the world. As a dissident, however, she has little influence over Chinese politics; her controversial books and articles are banned in China.

She was adopted by one of China’s “Ten Great Generals” after her father was executed by the Japanese in 1945 and later became recognized as a revolutionary martyr in China. An avid Communist Party member and schooled as a missile engineer, she got caught up in Mao’s Cultural Revolution and joined the Red Guards. She and her husband were sent to the countryside to help open reform by working as peasants. That experience of finding herself at the bottom of the social ladder changed her admiration for the Communist Party and left her seriously questioning government policies.

A Tiananmen Square veteran, Dai spent 10 months in a Chinese prison after publishing her first book on the dangers of building the dam, Yangtze! Yangtze! She was arrested, and almost everyone else involved in the book was punished, demoted or lost their job. Opposition to the dam is still totally suppressed.

While offers of political asylum loomed, her choice to remain in China has been a source of contention for the Communist Party, who would much prefer if she left China. By continuing to live in Beijing, she is able to continue to gather evidence to support her cause.

“The difference between me and other movement leaders in China is I refused to apply for a green card. Dissidents who decide to leave China due to intense political pressure watch their influence in China decrease,” Dai said.

According to Patricia Cowan, a Chinese historian who has accompanied Dai to China, the people in China have a high regard for her courageous convictions because she stills lives in China, even though her books and articles are banned there.

“She may not have a voice in China, but she still maintains a presence by having a choice to leave but staying,” Cowan said.

Cowan witnessed first hand the harassment and intrusions by government officials that attempt to hedge in her influence.

According to her book, the 80,000 dams constructed in the past 40 years in China have had a huge impact on flood control, electricity and irrigation, but the dams built during the Great Leap Forward have also had major problems because of shoddy construction. China averages 110 dam collapses each year, with the worst year being 1973, when 554 dams collapsed causing 9,937 deaths, excluding Banqiao and Shimantan collapses.

The most devastating was on Aug. 5, 1975, when a record-breaking typhoon caused the reservoir water of the Banqiao dam to collapse and, like dominoes, 63 dams followed suit, causing 230,000 to drown with 11 million people stricken by disease, food poisoning and famine in the aftermath. As incredible as the disaster was, the Communist Party imposed a strict media blackout on the event.

Dai’s book is the first detailed account of the 1975 flood, which China’s top hydrologists in the 1950s predicted would happen because of shoddy construction.

If the Three Gorges were ever to burst, dozens of towns, including Shashi, Yichang and Wuhan, would be completely inundated with water, directly affecting at least 10 million people.

With a projected cost of $70 billion, the 1.3-mile-long, 610-foot-high dam will create a reservoir as long as Lake Superior drowning out 1,200 ancient sites. It is estimated that 1.3 million people will be forced to relocate, with most receiving a small pittance for resettlement.

According to Dai, it will be 12 years before the Three Gorges project generates power and 20 years before it goes into full operation. This delay can hardly help solve the immediate problems of serious energy shortage in nearby areas. She advocates instead for building smaller dams that require less construction time and achieve faster economic results.

Dai hopes that under the new leadership of General Secretary Hu Jintao, who himself is a hydroelectric engineer and worked on the project, there will be more caution and better decision making concerning the project.

The River Dragon Has Come gives a harsh warning to China’s leaders from prominent Chinese intellectuals, engineers and journalists about the dam’s potentially disastrous effects on China’s economy, people and the revered Yangtze River.