Fu Xiaoqing (, born 24 August 1941), better known by her pen name Dai Qing (), is a journalist and activist for China-related issues; most significantly against the Three Gorges Dam Project. She left the Chinese Communist Party after the bloodshed of 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre and was thereafter incarcerated for ten months at maximum security facility Qingcheng Prison. Dai is also an author who has published many influential books, articles, and journals.
Fu Xiaoqing was born 24 August 1941 in Chongqing, Sichuan. Her father was Fu Daqing, an activist from Jiangxi who had studied Russian in Moscow and participated in armed rebellions in Nanchang and Guangzhou; her mother, Feng Dazhang (alternatively known as Yang Jie), had good family connections and had trained as a petroleum engineer in Japan. Both were Chinese Communist Party (CCP) activists and had begun doing intelligence work for the CCP following the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. They had two more children after Xiaoqing. In 1944 or 1945, Japanese occupation forces arrested Daqing and executed him. Feng was also arrested, but eventually released.
After the Second World War ended, Xiaoqing and her mother moved to Beijing. Xiaoqing was abandoned by her mother and subsequently adopted by revolutionary leader and politician Ye Jianying, a friend of her father's, and she was raised as part of his family. Xiaoqing started school and began using the name Fu Ning. Her middle school provided students with a strong liberal arts education, and Fu read widely as a child, becoming familiar with classic Russian and Western European literature before discovering American authors as a young adult. Her mother remarried.
From 1960 to 1966, Fu studied automatic missile guidance systems at the Harbin Institute of Military Engineering. While a student she also became a formal member of the CCP.
After graduating in 1966, Fu was briefly employed at a research institute of the Number Seven Ministry of Machinery Industry, working on gyroscopes for intercontinental ballistic missile guidance systems. When the Cultural Revolution started that year, Fu joined the Red Guards, but soon began feeling disillusioned with the movement's political leaders. Although she had not yet reached the politically mandated age for marriage and parenthood, Fu married Wang Dejia, a model research worker she had met at the Ministry research institute. The couple soon had one child, a daughter.
From 1968 to 1971, Fu and Wang were sent to attend governmental cadre schools in Zhanjiang and Dongting Lake, where they were forced to work as labourers on a remote farm. Their daughter was taken away and given to another family to raise during this period, and Fu was not permitted to leave the farm to visit her, even though she sent most of her monthly earnings to support the child. They did not see their daughter again until after their release from farm work. In 1972, Fu and her husband returned to Beijing and worked as technicians in a surveillance equipment factory under the Ministry of Public Security. From 1978 to 1979, Fu took English lessons at the PLA Foreign Languages Institute in Nanjing. She had noticed a widespread lack of children's books for Chinese children and was interested in translating English books for her daughter.
Fu published a short story in November 1979 â her first published work â and at this point began using the name Dai Qing. While studying at the Foreign Languages Institute, she had been recruited by the Chinese army's intelligence department. Because of her writing skills and English ability, she was assigned to join the Chinese Writers Association, make foreign contacts, and spy on writers taking part in international exchange programs. Her career as a spy turned out to be short-lived: her cover was blown by a colleague who gave a list of army personnel to the CIA, and Dai subsequently left the army in 1982.
After she left the Army in 1982, she joined Guangming Daily (å ÂæÂÂæ¥報) as a news reporter.
In 1966, Dai Qing graduated from the Harbin Military Engineering Academy (Ã¥ÂÂç¾濱è»ÂäºÂå·¥ç¨Âå¸é¢), predecessor of National University of Defense Technology. After graduation, she furthered her studies in Japan to become an oil engineer, and she was also trained as a missile engineer. In the same year, she worked as an engineer in a top secret plant which specialized in intercontinental missiles. After working as an engineer, she started her career as a writer/news reporter.
She was noticed in 1969 when the Guangming Daily published her short story which depicted the plight of a husband and a wife separated during the Cultural Revolution. As a result, she joined the China Writers Association in 1982. After publishing the short fiction, "Pan" ("ç¼"), she was paid high tribute as an author.
She then became a reporter for the Guangming Daily and she remained as a columnist from 1982 to 1989. Dai gained attention when she published a series of interviews with China's leading intellectual. She was the first Chinese journalist to announce the views and points of dissidents — people such as astrophysicist Fang Lizhi.
At that time, Dai was a dedicated patriot. She once said that she would die if Mao Zedong needed her to do soâÂÂbut after three to five years, she gradually changed her stance. Dai wanted to understand her community and the lives of ordinary citizens through the eyes of a journalist. She hoped to be able to contribute to the community. She was described as a supporter a Neoauthoritarianism in 1988 whereby China's hope for freedom and democracy lies with an enlightened autocrat; although she agreed with the idea in principle, she said that "China's tragedy is that we have no such new authoritarian."
Dai has a quixotic style of sudden asides in her writing, which may occasionally confuse the reader. At times, her biting sarcasm may be lost on those not intimately acquainted with China's political and journalistic culture.
Dai investigated and published works on some of the ignored figures in the history of communist China such as Wang Shiwei and Chu Anping.
Dai involvement with the Three Gorges Dam Project on the Yangtze River began in 1985 when she went to a press conference organized by a group (who included Sun Yueqi, a friend of her mother) opposed to the project. A group of old respected Chinese scientists, including Zhou Peiyuan and Lin Hua (æÂÂè¯), visited Three Gorges to inspect the region for dam construction, and a conference was held in the Hall of the Chinese People's Political Forum to present their findings, which The Ministry of Media told the press not to report. Dai found that she was the only journalist who turned up. However, Dai found the scientists' findings to be reasonable, and she became interested in what was then the major environmental issue in China.
In 1987, she made a visit to Hong Kong where she found journalists and intellectuals who were free to express their opinions on the Three Gorges Dam project. The Chinese media, on the other hand, was controlled by the Chinese government, and citizens who might be affected by the project were unaware of the debate on the dam. She felt that it was her responsibility to inform the public on any opposing view on the Three Gorges Dam project. She met a writer named Lin Feng, and he mailed her all the Hong Kong newspaper articles related to this issue. She regarded the project as "the most environmentally and socially destructive project in the world", and hoped her writing would encourage Chinese people to speak out and avoid repeating past mistakes.
In 1989, when it became apparent that the government was going ahead with the project, she collected articles opposing the project which led to the publication of the book Yangtze! Yangtze! (æ¯å¦该è¿Âè¡Âé¿æ±Âä¸Â峡水åÂÂçÂÂå·¥ç¨Â). The book includes interviews and essays from the Chinese scientists and journalists opposed to the project. She joined a number of prominent individuals opposed to the project, including Zhou Peiyuan, Zhang Jie, Li Pu, and Li Rui, in a conference held in the Hall of Chinese People's Political Forum to protest against the government's decision on the Three Gorges Dam.
She argued that there was already serious emigration, either legal or illegal, from China to other countries, like Canada, the United States, Europe and so on. The project would create a large number of refugees needing a place to live, which would further aggravate the legal or illegal emigration problem. In addition, the project would have had global effect on the climate. Dai claimed that there was a potential risk for both the Yangtze River and the Yellow River to dry up, leading the sandstorms in Inner Mongolia to have a greater influence on Korea, Japan and even the west coast of the United States.
Besides publishing Yangtze! Yangtze!, she also authored many books to share her opinions, especially about the Three Gorges Dam project such as The River Dragon Has Come! (æ°´é¾Âä¾ÂäºÂ!). However, Yangtze! Yangtze! was banned after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.
In 1989, student protest movement broke out. Dai Qing joined other scholars by calling on the government to curtail corruption and support democratic reform. When students staged the April 27 demonstrations that included a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square, Dai Qing made a passionate speech there, encouraging students to leave peacefully to avoid bloodshed. If they stayed, she warned, they could provoke a violent crackdown that could seriously set back the process of reform. She was not heeded, and the crackdown came on June 4.
On June 4, 1989, after the massacre at Tiananmen Square, she publicly announced her decision to quit the Chinese Communist Party.
After the incident, many scholars either went into hiding, were detained, According to one of her books, My Imprisonment, (æÂÂçÂÂå ¥çÂÂ, Wo de Ruyu) Dai mentioned that the police had visited her the day before her imprisonment as a way of warning her. However, she did not plan to run away for her life because she loved her country. She said, "As a citizen of a country, I cannot leave her. And I have to criticise it in order to build a more perfect and stronger one."
On June 29, 1989, Dai Qing was denounced by the Mayor of Beijing Chen Xitong along with other reformist intellectuals. Dai Qing was arrested in early July 1989 and imprisoned on the charge of "advocating bourgeois liberalization and instigating civil unrest." She spent the next ten months at maximum security facility Qingcheng Prison. She was formally denounced by her former co-workers at Guangming Daily, and in September of that year the Press and Publication Bureau banned domestic sales of her writings.
Upon her release in May 1990, Dai Qing was forbidden from further publication within China. The government kept her under surveillance and restricted her ability to travel. She was offered political asylum by the United States and Germany, but turned them both down. Instead, she wrote a book about her time in Qingcheng titled My Imprisonment (æÂÂçÂÂå ¥çÂÂ), which she was able to have published in Hong King and Taiwan. Her daughter graduated from Beijing University that year, but was denied further opportunities for study after she refused to formally denounce her mother.
In her book, she said, "What I can fight for is to let others know I am innocent but have a rebellious spirit."
As a former reporter for the Guangming Daily, she used to write frequently. However, her imprisonment after the publication of the Yangtze! Yangtze! made her change. In My Imprisonment, she declared she would no longer be a reporter. Since she was no longer a member of the Communist Party, she said, "They (the Communist Party) will probably give me up, but I will not be glad to work with them neither."
Dai Qing argues that China has not yet abolished the mode of collective society from the previous eras. Therefore, she continues to fight for human rights, democracy, and environmentalism along with people in both China and the West.
From 2003âÂÂ2004, Dai Qing held the position of Weissberg Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice at Beloit College, spending time in residency on campus.
In 2009, Dai Qing and poet Bei Ling were scheduled to speak at a Frankfurt Book Fair event about contemporary issues in China. However, the event was jointly hosted with China (the book fair's guest of honour that year), and both writers were removed from the list of speakers after Chinese officials demanded their exclusion. Dai Qing told press she would be attending the fair even if she were not permitted to formally speak. The following year, after jailed human rights activist Liu Xiaobo was named a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, his wife Liu Xia asked other Chinese activists and dissidents to attend the award ceremony in support of him, and Dai Qing confirmed that she would be among those in attendance.
In 2016, Dai was still living in Shunyi, Beijing, and continuing to write.
In 2017, Dai went to Chiang Mai in Thailand where a friend invited her to stay, and she decided to move there permanently.
From 1991âÂÂ1992, Dai Qing held a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. In recognition of work supporting freedom of the press, she received the 1992 Golden Pen of Freedom award from the World Association of News Publishers, and a PEN International Award. In 1993 she was awarded a Goldman Environmental Prize and the Condé Nast Traveler Environmental Award, and accepted a fellowship at the Columbia University School of Journalism. She used her time there to complete research for her book Wang Shiwei and "Wild Lilies": Reflection and Purges in the Chinese Communist Party, 1942âÂÂ1944.
She held a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center from 1998âÂÂ1999, and in 2007 she took up a year-long fellowship at Australian National University.