"This is an important collection of essays on the problems that can be expected if China's Three Gorges Dam is built as planned. Especially vivid are the accounts of the series of dam collapses in China during 1975, the assessments of the cost of the human resettlement plans, the loss of artistic treasures, and the immense problems that will arise from industrial and human waste accumulations in the reservoir. A chilling cautionary tale."

--Jonathan Spence, Yale University

"The River Dragon Has Come! is another monumental work by the courageous writer Dai Qing. It tells the story of how governmental officials and dam boosters are manipulating common sense, economics and politics to promote the world's largest dam project, The Three Gorges Dam. Dai Qing's brave opposition to the project, in the face of overwhelming opposition from Chinese officials, is an inspiration to us all. If you care about rivers, if you care about democracy, then The River Dragon Has Come! is for you."

--Daniel P. Beard, Former Commissioner, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

"This informative collection compiled by Qing, a journalist and dissident whose earlier Yangtze! Yangtze! resulted in a 10-month jail term in solitary confinement, contains articles critical of the Chinese government's project to tame the Yangtze River by building the world's largest dam. Essays by Chinese academic specialists analyze the project from many aspects, including Qi Ren's study of the enormous number of people who must be resettled, estimated at between 1.3 and 1.6 million."

--Publishers Weekly

"People who care about the environment should find the topic interesting."

--The Earth Times

"The essays ... illustrate, first, that the Chinese government is unlikely to back down from its mission and, second, that there exists a small number of well-informed Chinese dissidents. ... Recommended."

--Library Journal

M. E. Sharpe, Inc. Web Site, January, 2001

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, a woman 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 a last-ditch effort to prevent history from repeating itself ten-fold (a reference to the great floods in 1975 during which over sixty dams collapsed and at least 100,000 people lost their lives) if the 39 billion cubic meters 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, incidentially, the most hazardous of all hydro-electric projects on this planet."--from the Foreword by Audrey Ronning Topping

Preface, John G. Thibodeau and Philip B. Williams
Foreword, Audrey Ronning Topping

I: The Three Gorges Project: A Symbol of Uncontrolled Development in the Late Twentieth Century, Dai Qing
II: A Profile of Dams in China, Shui Fu
III: The World's Most Catastrophic Dam Failures: The August 1975 Collapse of the Banqiao and Shimantan Dams, Yi Si
IV: Discussing Population Resettlement with Li Boning

1: General Plan for Population Resettlement, Li Boning
2: Is Developmental Resettlement Possible?, Qi Ren

V: The Environmental Impacts of Resettlement in the Three Gorges Project, Chen Guojie
VI: What Are the Three Gorges Resettlers Thinking?, Ding Qigang
VII: A Survey of Resettlement in Badong County, Hubei Province, Ding Qigang and Zheng Jiaqin
VIII: Resettlement in the Xin'an River Power Station Project, Mou Mo and Cai Wenmei
IX: 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, Dai Qing
X: A Lamentation for the Yellow River: The Three Gate Gorge Dam Sanmenxia, Shang Wei
XI: Water Pollution in the Three Gorges Reservoir, Jin Hui
XII: Military Perspectives on the Three Gorges Project, Da Bing

Epilogue: The New Golden Triangle of China , Richard Hayman
Appendix A: Acknowledgments From ``General Plan for Population Resettlement,", Li Boning
Appendix B: Sediment Problems at the Three Gorges Dam, Luna B. Leopold
Appendix C: The Three Gorges Dam and the Fate of China's Southern Heritage, Elizabeth Childs-Johnson and Lawrence R. Sullivan
Appendix D: Priority Level Cultural Antiquities in the Three Gorges Area, Appendix E: Archaeological Sites to be Inundated in 1997 by the Construction of the Three Gorges Dam
Appendix F: Letter to Jiang Zemin Concerning Archaeological Sites