For years, even social scientists have supported a widely held belief that Chinese . However, the films relevance extends far beyond the issue of waste management. Fish makes up the majority of diets for many people in China. China boosts electric car fleet for public transport, Support award-winning independent journalism with Yet reports have linked the Yangtze river as the one of the biggest sources of global plastic pollution, claiming the river to be responsible for more than half of all marine plastic pollution, but more recent studies found that the Philippines accounts for more than one-third of plastic inputs in oceans while putting China at 7%. While more time is needed to analyse the bans impacts domestically, it has had rippling effects across global plastic pollution and management. Garbage collectors called rag and bone men ply the alleys of the cities, pedaling . Beijing seems to be neither "biding its time" nor rising peacefully. "Our country's leaders did not want us to have children and I didn't know why, but we could not do anything about it," he sighs. At that point, it was already the world's most populous country. hb```"qVta1 FsD The film has been particularly closely associated with the issue of waste imports since July 2017, when the Chinese central government hit headlines domestically and internationally by announcing a ban on imports of 24 categories of waste, including many types of plastics (Voice of America 2018). That part of the industry is very sensitive, and if you have nothing to do with them, you cant get in, Wang said. Years of rapid growth have made China appear prosperous, but pollution is having a huge impact on health while Chinas growth appears incredible, it is actually cheap and fragile. Based on current rates, the countrys total population could reach up to 1.46 billion by 2028, resulting in even high amounts of waste. The family obviously lives on very little, and Wang Kun, the breadwinner, has a possibly serious affliction that affects his capacity to work, and remains undiagnosed and untreated, partly because he fears that seeking medical attention could result in high expenses. China has been taking US plastic waste for three decades. By donating us $100, $50 or subscribe to Boosting $10/month we can get this article and others in front of tens of thousands of specially targeted readers. The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, plastic consumption has soared, adding an extra 25,900 tonnes of plastics in the ocean thats equivalent to more than 2,000 double decker buses. "That requires buying them a car, an apartment. 0000003355 00000 n the mother laughs helplessly. Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng attends a rally to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre June 4, 2019, at the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. A magazine advertisement for the Sandals Resorts looks like paradise; catalogs with computer parts offer up opportunities to build paper versions of electronics she could never afford. "This was not your average level of policy enforcement. And in May, after a new census showed the birth rate had slowed, China raised the cap to three children. This prompted the Chinese government to introduce a raft of new laws and regulations to limit plastic waste in 2020, and announced a plan for 2021 to 2025 which aims to further improve the management of the entire chain of plastic pollution. That's up from 152 million ten years. No one can afford that," she complains. The target . They did not officially register the last two to avoid paying a fine, but the father says he still paid a bribe to family planning officials to avoid further harassment. Yi-Jie is an 11-year-old girl who works and lives at a plastics recycling facility in the documentary "Plastic China." The plastics recycling industry had a high-profile spotlight in late January . Directors Jiu-liang Wang Genres Documentary Subtitles English [CC] When the inevitable collapse came, most of the companies went bankrupt, leaving city authorities having to pay to clean up the mess. Families were already having fewer children in the 1970s, before the policy took force in 1979. Among the films many harrowing scenes is that of Pengs wife giving birth to her fourth child in the Wangs garden, with what looks like a total absence of medical assistance. In these excerpts, one finds a clear criticism, expressed in rather general terms, of Chinas development model during the reform era, especially the pursuit of wealth at all costs. Since 2014, Chinas household registration system (hukou) is being eased with a view to, among other things, give migrants better access to healthcare and education. https%3A%2F%2Fearth.org%2Fchina-plastic-pollution%2F. But the Chinese government punished Chen for his activism by imprisoning him, then trapping him for nearly three years in his home, in a village just outside Linyi. And so, ironically, now that people are allowed to have more children, they are increasingly reluctant to, because of the high cost of child care and education. 0000023031 00000 n B!$H BBAZ[:]nu+n:utvw=vvw9}#AaH"\mAnirF~'U44`~4w~gqci)kJ Families of people who died after contracting coronavirus in China's former epicentre Wuhan say they are constantly monitored and warned by authorities, who tell them speaking out will damage . This change will not be easy, but it must be done. "There is no point in controlling them. of plastic inputs in oceans while putting China at 7%. When I see the value in something, and its necessary to communicate it to a mass audience, any obstacles that might stop me, they dont exist, he said. In another one, he explained, in reference to the films title that: The [word] plastic here has two meanings: first it refers to the plastic waste, but at a deeper level it refers to the weakness beneath our surface prosperity;the way plastic surgery only improves appearance, not the reality. She picks out broken Barbie dolls and passes over Western product labels, a seemingly deliberate shot for Wang to remind viewers of the vastly different worlds between the kids who tossed those toys away and the ones on the other side of the world who pick them out of the trash to play with. One first reason why Plastic China should be considered as a comprehensive reflection on the contemporary condition in China is that this is consistent with the directors intention. During the reform era, this has prevented them from enjoying key rights and public services in their place of residence. , where in 2019, it reportedly churned out about 5.3 million tonnes of plastics. If single-use plastic production remains at the current trajectory of growth, they could account for five to 10% of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, further exacerbating climate change. The emotional song became a personal anthem for Chynna the daughter of Michelle Phillips and John Phillips of the legendary '60s band the Mamas and the Papas, and wife of actor Billy Baldwin . A familiar margarine packet among the mountains of rubbish in a backyard recycling facility on China. The success of the first film got Wang invited to California, where he toured recycling plants as part of his next round of research. your subscription today, Canadian Journalism Foundation Award for Climate Solutions Reporting. Wangs camera catches heartbreaking images of Jie, the preteen with a collapsing weight of responsibility on her young shoulders. Either the government is already losing faith in the reality of its implementation, or it needs a bigger budget for advertising. by China's decision to focus on domestic recycling in an effort to clean up their own landfills is a slap in the face to our First World consumer culture. The Pengs precarious existence and the fact that they are basically left to fend for themselves is striking for both Chinese and foreign viewers. For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. Meanwhile, mass urbanization and rural migration have changed the financial and social calculus, making . Yet, have linked the Yangtze river as the one of the biggest sources of global plastic pollution, claiming the river to be responsible for more than half of all marine plastic pollution, but more recent studies found that the, Philippines accounts for more than one-third. But starting in 2005, the authorities began enforcing the policy with a renewed ferocity in Linyi. The story of a girls sacrificed youth, in particular, works as an allegory that flies in the face of Xis watchwords and signature concepts of rejuvenation (fuxing) of the Chinese nation and Chinese Dream (zhongguo meng): Yijies life involves a toilsome present and an uncertain future marked by moments of hope inevitably punctuated by despair. The question remains, however, whether this was worth the enormous sacrifice in financial security, and viewers are left wondering what will happen to the family if Wang Kun is diagnosed with a serious illness. The daughter of a young plastic factory worker, Yi Jie, looks over a heap of plastic while cradling her baby sibling. In the 1990s, he says, family planning officials ambushed him in his home at night and beat him with sticks in an effort to convince his wife to abort their third son. Plastic China focuses on materially ambitious factory-owner Kun, his employee Peng, and their families. There are two younger boys, Liu Zhuang, 5 and Liu Jian, 4, as well as newly born twin sisters. Its massive local plastic production further contributes to Chinas lion share of global greenhouse emissions mainly from coal production. Many low-quality and contaminated materials are being redirected elsewhere including Africa and other Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Malaysia, which had arguably less capacity to prevent waste from contaminating their local environments. 60 Pieces Disposable Plastic Plates Set, Premium Plates for Parties with Real China Design, Red Plates Set - 30 x10.25 Inch Dinner and 30 x7.5 Inch Salad Hard Plates Combo (Warm Red) 189. She demurs, her voice growing quiet. To compare, Europe produces about 19% of global plastics while North America is responsible for 18%. In the absence of any recognisably subversive content, I would argue that it was the image of China conveyed by Wangs bleak and shocking depiction of the countrys recycling sector that struck a nerve. He frightens viewers with images of the relentless plastic flowing through the small factory, preying on our ability to empathize with these poverty-stricken laborers. The whenever is ambiguous, as his 11-year-old daughter Yi Jie tells the camera that hes been promising to send her to school since she was five. 0000017854 00000 n Since its release, the film has become indissociable from the issue of waste exports, and it gained even more prominence after July 2017, when the Chinese government announced a wide-ranging ban on foreign waste (yang laji) (Liebman 2018). Products. China implemented the policy of limiting each family to one child in 1979 to slow the growth of the country's population. By the container load, the cast-off plastic comes from Korea, Europe and the US. And according to an Associated Press investigation, it continues to impose stricter controls over births including forced sterilizations among ethnic minorities, like the Turkic Uyghurs. Her son is part of the last generation of children in China whose births were ruled illegal at the time. Yet the authorities still only allow couples to have three children. This alters the one-child policy that was introduced in 1978 to control the . Just like Beijing Besieged by Waste, the movie uncovers a gnarly scene beyond the cosmopolitan city. It is against this backdrop that Plastic China came out in 2016. She already had two children and had gone through four abortions afterward, to avoid paying the ruinously high "social maintenance fee" demanded from families as penalty when they contravened birth limits. Lu says he paid a 4,000 yuan fine to have his second son in 2006 (about $500 at the time), after hiding his wife for months. In 2014, Wang released an early, less narrative but more explanatory version of his documentary addressed at the media, in which he clearly frames the issue as environmental dumping. Han Dynasty Emperor Xian of Han, the last emperor of Han dynasty died as a duke. She is especially protective of him. trailer <<4243014C4E284DEB98C83941C307E81B>]/Prev 529831>> startxref 0 %%EOF 74 0 obj <>stream An important implication is that improving the lives of the people who live in rural recycling hubs and engage in waste sorting and processing requires more than putting an end to waste importsespecially if imports are substituted with domestic waste, of which there is no shortage in China. Some scenes in the film take place in a dumpsite, where waste is burned in the open, or next to a river, where it accumulates. Instead of numbing us with facts like how China has contaminated over 80 per cent of its fresh water through landfills and processing, he gets us to feel bad for Kun, Peng and their kids; if we identified with their plight, perhaps we wouldnt want to send so much trash for them to sort through. Twenty years later, the volume of. It has been ten months since China closed its doors to the world's recycling waste. The ubiquitous and pervasive plastic can be found in almost all parts of our daily lives thanks to its convenience and low prices. But the legacy of the one-child rule is still painfully felt by many parents who suffered for having multiple children. 0000023972 00000 n China's decision to abolish its one-child policy offered some relief to couples and to sellers of baby-related goods, but the government hasn't lifted birth limits entirely. 0000022087 00000 n 43 0 obj <> endobj xref 43 32 0000000016 00000 n "A very unbalanced population gender-wise has also led to a rise in property prices in major cities because families of men have bought apartments to make their sons eligible in a marriage market where there are millions of missing women," says Mei Fong, who wrote a book on the one-child rule. Experts warn of an increase in illegal dumping and incineration of plastics as prices for plastic scraps plummet in the wake of Chinas exit from the market it dominated. $2599 ($0.87/Count) Save more with Subscribe & Save. One night in August 2008, the mother made a fateful decision. Many low-quality and contaminated materials are being redirected elsewhere including Africa and other Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Malaysia, which had arguably less capacity to prevent waste from contaminating their local environments. Second, this prevents us from understanding why the film was censored in China, when the denunciation of waste imports actually fits with the Chinese states increasingly restrictive policies on this issue since the 2010s. To compensate for this narrow focus, we need to look beyond the predominant reading. The problem The bike-sharing craze in China five years ago sucked in billions of dollars of investors' cash and clients' deposits that start-ups spent on millions of new bikes in an effort to grab market share. Landfills stretch out endlessly, enormous hills of colourful plastic bottles loom in the distance, and what we can only presume to be toxic water run-off from the factory is what Jie uses to wet her hair before she brushes it. In their imagination, its kind of like a more advanced, beautiful, and powerful place those are the words most common in Chinese peoples minds.. Andy Wong/AP Since taking office as president, Xi Jinping has striven to distinguish his government from the previous one. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Children ride a toy train at a shopping mall in Beijing, on Oct. 30, 2015. In China, rural migrants are generally registered in their place of origin but spend most of their time living far away from their hometowns. The state-owned company was recently named the third-largest single-use plastic waste producer in the world, where in 2019, it reportedly churned out about 5.3 million tonnes of plastics. siQ6_{#WP(*K9-4GF(NTZ,GI2RV#PF"@(!9BI-$(E^D]ut(nK Jgu")( D)" Anxious about already strained public education and health care systems, China's leadership is reportedly considering ditching limits entirely. %PDF-1.4 % It followed reports in the Age last month that revealed thousands tonnes of soft. Updated. "If you carry it with you all the time, it gets too tiring.". 0000009053 00000 n Editor's note: This story contains descriptions that may be disturbing. A Chinese couple whose son was abducted in a hotel in 1988 have been reunited with him after 32 years. (Liu 2014). Now they are stepping away from a plastics lobbying . This brings us to the topic of censorship. On July 16 that year, as Beijing was gearing up to hold the Summer Olympics, Zhang flagged the sudden increase of infant cases to his hospital's dean, who then reported them to the local health. Another factor that justifies adopting a broad interpretation of Plastic China is the wide range of social issues addressed by Wang. The suit led to an apology from the authorities in Linyi and a reduction in the kidnappings, beatings and forced abortions. Moreover, Plastic China contains virtually no direct criticism of any government, state-owned enterprise, or other powerful entitya key difference with Under the Dome (qiong ding zhi xia 2015), another documentary on Chinas environmental predicament that also went viral and disappeared from the Internet in a matter of days. In one interview about the film, Wang stated that: China is a country that is facelifted, concealed, faked and unnatural. Fred Dufour/AFP via Getty Images In 2012, Chen escaped by scaling a wall and running to the next village, despite being blind and having broken his foot during the escape. However, implementation of this reform only begun several years into the shooting of Plastic China (which lasted from 2011 to 2016), and remains patchy to this day. When probed about why he doesnt send his kids to school, his reply is that he prefers to spend money on drinking, musing that his children can attend school for free whenever they return to his home village. Trailer for 'Plastic China' film by director Wang Jiuliang. Chinas decision to focus on domestic recycling in an effort to clean up their own landfills is a slap in the face to our First World consumer culture. Yeah, in China you'll meet tons of people who had siblings born while the one-child policy was in effect. This contrasts with the situation of Wang Qiqi, Kuns son, who is sent to the kindergarten so that he can pick up literacy skills early on in the hope that he will get access to a high-earning job later in life, ideally in an office in Beijingit should be noted, however, that Qiqi is not only a boy, but also an only child. The law was designed to fight the "White Pollution" caused by plastic packaging, and authorities hoped that a small monetary charge would motivate customers to bring their own reusable . Its river basin comprises one-fifth of the countrys land area, and supports and houses nearly one-third of the population. 0000019453 00000 n The family, who lives near the city of Kunming in Yunnan province, adopted what . Image by: Our World in Data. First of all his film tackles the problem of labour exploitation. Mao Yin was snatched aged two, while his father stopped to get him some water on the way home. Andy Wong/AP The Yangtze river, the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world, is an important water body in China. There, he was picked up by supporters and driven to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. hide caption. The British colony simply. 0000035823 00000 n Our current pattern of manufacture, consume, discard is creating a chain of exploitation; it exploits the workers making our products, it exploits us through merciless advertising; and it exploits millions of poverty-stricken laborers working for a pittance like Kun and Peng in Plastic China. Even before China's ban, only 9 percent of discarded plastic was being recycled, while 12 percent was burned. We figured out that the waste wasnt necessarily Chinese waste, so I started to research what was behind this huge mountain of waste and all the dumping, and the fires, and smog, Wang told Inverse, through a translator, at Sundance. Part of the reason she demurred when first speaking to NPR was because of how dearly her family fought for his birth. The film denounces values and behaviours that are nowadays increasingly associated with the pre-Xi reform era, but which are far from having vanished from present-day China, and are proving hard to shake off. In China, the film went viral in January 2017 before quickly disappearing from the Internetthereby following a pattern that affects most of Wangs work (Zhao 2017). Some businesses have stepped up, too. What is certain is that the film can serve as a justification for the outright ban on waste importsirrespective of whether Wang ever regarded a ban as the proper solution to the problems he documented in his film. Almost certainly, a proportion will have come from the homes, or more specifically the recycling bins, of Australia. Today, the ongoing secrecy and censorship makes it impossible to know how many died that night. The film also alerted people in China to the dangers of haphazard waste management, and drew attention to the sheer mass of waste generated by a city the size of Beijing. Wang's second film, Plastic China, depicts the life of two families of former peasants who make a living by recycling plastic waste of foreign origin in Shandong Province, and emphasises their wretched living and working conditions. In the last two years, the issue of waste exports to China has attractedconsiderable mediaand public attention. From Jun 1 of that year, customers began to be charged for plastic shopping bags, and a total ban of ultrathin (less than 0.025mm thick) bags came into action. The film premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in November 2016, and was shown at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. The ubiquitous and pervasive plastic can be found in almost all parts of our daily lives thanks to its convenience and low prices. Yi-Jie, who lives in a spare room at the plant with her parents and siblings, spends her days working and constructing imaginary worlds atop the piles of trash that cover the ground. But last year, China put the kibosh on . Waste incineration capabilities are to be greatly increased, with the aim of reaching up to burning 800,000 tons of urban domestic waste per day by 2025. Yvan Schulz obtained his PhD from the Anthropology Institute, University of Neuchtel in February 2018. The LEGO Foundation is awarding a total of DKK 900 million (approximately US$ 117 Million) to support organisations that make substantial contributions to the lives of children from birth to six years old and spark a global movement to prioritise early childhood development. hide caption. Welcome to Wang Jiuliang's Plastic China, a quiet, intimate look into the lives of two Chinese families barely scraping a living by laboring at a small family run recycling plant. The . of mismanaged plastic waste, and is the biggest offender of ocean plastic pollution. But Chinas contribution to the global plastic crisis does not end there. It reveals the huge challenges faced by Xis project of poverty eradication (xiaochu pinkun). If we do nothing and continue to turn our beautiful world into a Wall-E-esque nightmare, then the fate of our civilization will be suicide by garbage. A deliberate shift in consumption will not happen overnight. When his wife became pregnant again, he hoped for a son,. In conclusion, Plastic China constitutes a broad reflexion on social problems and dilemmas in the post-socialist era. It now collects its community's plastic trash and turns it into fuel. This is regrettable, for two main reasons. 0000010125 00000 n Summaries. Boost this article Some demographers in China argue that instituting birth limits was necessary for keeping birth rates low. Anxious that rapid population growth would strain the country's welfare systems and state-planned economy, the Chinese state began limiting how many children families could have in the late 1970s. His research explores Chinas state project of ecological modernisation from the angle of e-waste reuse and recycling. But Kunwho is Han, from Shandong province, and can read and writerefuses, telling Wenyuan that he can always leave if he is not satisfied. "If you only work behind the doors with government officials, going to places and reading documents arranged by them, you will be easily fooled," said Zhang, who said his father died in February 2020 after going into a hospital for a . In 2017, China collected 215 million tonnes of urban household waste, according to the country's statistical yearbook. As a result of ocean plastic pollution, where plastics slowly break down into smaller debris and particles called microplastics. The photographer-turned-director's debut documentary, 2011's Beijing Besieged by. China had 1 million more births in 2016 than in 2015, following the end of the one-child policy. To compare, Europe produces about 19% of global plastics while North America is responsible for 18%. !(^^\(c-RUFkEE The film clearly belongs to Chinas new documentary movement, which has created an important space for social commentary and critique since the early 1990s (Berry and Rofel 2010). Our current pattern of manufacture, consume, discard is creating a chain of exploitation; it exploits the workers making our products, it exploits us through merciless advertising; and it exploits millions of poverty-stricken laborers working for a pittance like . On January 1, 2019, a ban on plastic straws in restaurants and other service businesses began in Washington, D.C. Read on for the reasons . It was featured in numerous festivals outside China, and has won several awards. Her worries these days are more mundane. Jan. 1 marked a significant cultural shift in China starting this year, families will be able to have two children. The photographer-turned-directors debut documentary, 2011s Beijing Besieged by Waste, discovered the city-sized hills of garbage trucked to the outskirts of the Chinese capital, where displaced families lived in houses made of trash.