ABSTRACT
The publication of the book Yangtze! Yangtze! which was accompanied by a well-orchestrated media lobbying campaign, set off the first public challenge to Chinese government censorship of media coverage of the Three Gorges debate. A few months later, in the wake of the bloody crackdown of Tiananmen demonstrators, the book was banned and its organizer Dai Qing was thrown into prison. The following year, the top leadership of China reached a consensus to dam the Yangzi River. Construction started in 1994 and was scheduled to finish in 2009. Patricia Adams, executive director of Probe International, a Toronto-based environmental organization that has been a leading group protesting the Three Gorges dam, said the media coverage of Three Gorges has been at an all-time high from 1994 to the present. Grainne Ryder, a project director with Probe International, believes that the increased coverage of the project was, to some extent, prompted by the constant campaigns of the environmental community in North America.
