Dammed if she doesn't

Dai Qing lives for one thing: to stop China’s Three Gorges dam being built across the Yangtze river. Why? She says it will displace 1.5 million people and cause devastating environmental damage. But she faces a difficult task. Perhaps an impossible one. Construction of the world’s largest dam is in full flow. And China isn’t in the habit of listening to dissenters, particularly a rocket scientist who abandoned hard-core Communism-and spying for Mao-to find fame as a writer. So shouldn’t she really be doing something else? Fred Pearce went to Beijing and asked Dai if it’s time for a…