COMMUNISM'S NEGOTIATED COLLAPSE:
THE POLISH ROUND TABLE TALKS OF 1989,
TEN YEARS LATER
A Conference at the University of Michigan, April 7-10, 1999

Trained as a missile engineer, Dai Qing (b. 1941) is a prominent Chinese journalist and writer. Dai's investigative reports about dissident figures persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party in the 1940s and 1950s were published during the 1980s. She co-organized China's first environmental lobby in 1989 in opposition to construction of the Three Gorges Dam Project on the Yangtze River. Although banned after several printings in China, her 1989 collection of essays by prominent Chinese intellectuals critical of the hydroelectric project, Yangtze! Yangtze!, was largely responsible for the government's decision to temporarily postpone construction of the dam. After publicly denouncing the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and quitting the Chinese Communist Party on June 5, Dai was jailed for ten months and is no longer able to publish in China. Currently a Scholar in Residence at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, she has been honored with several international fellowships and awards.

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