To Our Readers

By ELIZABETH VALK LONG President

Hong Kong-based senior correspondent Sandra Burton has never wanted for determination; so when a long-sought visa to visit China and survey its mammoth Three Gorges Dam project on the Yangtze River arrived recently, she set out immediately -- despite a broken ankle. She was doing nicely, navigating curbs and dodging Beijing bicycle traffic on her crutches, when she arrived at the office building of a high official attached to the dam. There, an apologetic aide informed her that due to one of the city's increasingly frequent power shortages, the elevator was out -- and she would have to climb six flights of stairs. Leaning on her interpreter, Burton made it up the steep candlelit stairway. "When I arrived, wilted and breathless," she recounts, her interview subject chuckled, gestured to a mural of the dam and said, " 'Now you can see for yourself how badly we will need the energy this dam will supply.' "

Of course, Burton had known already. She first arrived in Beijing as bureau chief in 1988, following stints in Los Angeles, Boston, Paris and Hong Kong. She was best known for her coverage of Filipino leader Benigno Aquino's assassination (her tape-recording of the shots that killed him became evidence at the murder trial) and of the subsequent "people power" rallies that swept his widow Cory to power. Burton had not been in China long when a similar street demonstration occurred -- with tragically different results -- at Tiananmen Square. But in quieter moments, Beijing's blanket of smog awakened in Burton a fascination with the contradictory imperatives of China's huge energy needs and its desire to meet them "without rendering its cities unfit for life."

That interest remained keen after Burton moved back to Hong Kong to take up a regional reporting beat that entails travel from Islamabad to Borneo, from Rangoon to the disputed Spratly Island of Layang Layang. With the collaboration of current TIME Beijing bureau chief Jaime FlorCruz and correspondent Mia Turner, Burton kept current on the Chinese environmental saga, and the Three Gorges piece, which appears in this issue, is the result.

Reporting in the Middle Kingdom often involves logistical and bureaucratic challenges, she says, "but it's almost always worth the trouble. The social and economic changes that are taking place there are so sweeping as to dwarf all others I see elsewhere in this dynamic part of the world." And, in pursuit of a big story, there are few places to which Burton won't fly, drive -- or hobble.