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.

[1]: 66  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[2] and had trained as a petroleum engineer in Japan.

Xiaoqing was subsequently adopted by revolutionary leader and politician Ye Jianying, a friend of her father's,[3] and she was raised as part of his family.

[4] Her middle school provided students with a strong liberal arts education,[5]: 285  and Fu read widely as a child, becoming familiar with classic Russian and Western European literature before discovering American authors as a young adult.

[2] 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.

[2] When the Cultural Revolution started that year, Fu joined the Red Guards, but soon began feeling disillusioned with the movement's political leaders.

[3] From 1968 to 1971, Fu and Wang were sent to attend governmental cadre schools in Zhanjiang and Dongting Lake,[2] 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,[3] 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.

In 1966, Dai Qing graduated from the Harbin Military Engineering Academy (哈爾濱軍事工程學院), predecessor of National University of Defense Technology.

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 famous and fearless China journalist and writer, Dai hoped her writing would encourage Chinese people to speak out and avoid repeating past mistakes.

Around 1986, a group of old respected Chinese scientists, including Zhou Peiyuan 周培源 and Lin Hua (林華), visited Three Gorges to inspect the region for dam construction.

One day a conference was held in the Hall of the Chinese People’s Political Forum about Three Gorges which The Ministry of Media told the press not to report.

She saw that every journalist and intellectual were free to express their opinions on the Three Gorges Dam project on the Yangtze River, and she was touched by their concerns for China.

Extremely anxious, Dai felt that it was her responsibility to let people know the opposing views about the Three Gorges Dam project.

Eventually she met a writer named Lin Feng, and after he discovered her concerns about the Three Gorges, he mailed her all the Hong Kong newspaper articles related to this issue.

Dai Qing, not knowing whether to flee or not, only managed to make phone calls everyday to comfort her friends and relatives.

"[citation needed] Dai Qing was arrested in July 1989 and imprisoned on the charge of "advocating bourgeois liberalization and instigating civil unrest.

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.

Her daughter graduated from Beijing University that year, but was denied further opportunities for study after she refused to formally denounce her mother.

From 2003–2004, Dai Qing held the position of Weissberg Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice at Beloit College, spending time in residency on campus.

[11] 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.

She used her time there to complete research for her book Wang Shiwei and "Wild Lilies": Reflection and Purges in the Chinese Communist Party, 1942–1944.