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. There, he was picked up by supporters and driven to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Something doesn't add up here. Her job at a nearby canning factory refuses to hire her full time, she says, because she is a mother of three and needs to leave every afternoon to pick up her son from school. But Kunwho is Han, from Shandong province, and can read and writerefuses, telling Wenyuan that he can always leave if he is not satisfied. (Liu 2014). A Chinese couple whose son was abducted in a hotel in 1988 have been reunited with him after 32 years. That part of the industry is very sensitive, and if you have nothing to do with them, you cant get in, Wang said. of mismanaged plastic waste, and is the biggest offender of ocean plastic pollution. It forces us to re-examine our waste habits and confront the reality that every time we throw out our beloved Tim Hortons coffee cups, we are poisoning our environment at an alarming rate. Directors Jiu-liang Wang Genres Documentary Subtitles English [CC] "I really feel happy. Despite censorship, Wang Jiuliang has managed to reach a wide audience with Plastic China, and have considerable impact. 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. 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. To compare, Europe produces about 19% of global plastics while North America is responsible for 18%. During the reform era, this has prevented them from enjoying key rights and public services in their place of residence. However, the film is all too often reduced to its function as a tool for denouncing environmental dumping. 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 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. Its river basin comprises one-fifth of the countrys land area, and supports and houses nearly one-third of the population. The limit in most cases was just one child. Where Wang achieves sentimentality and awareness at displaying his subjects somber existence, he fails in giving his audience any objective information about the health, social, or environmental impacts of the Chinese recycling process. "Other doctors would artificially induce labor. Along the belt, human workers pick and channel what is valuable (bottles, cardboard, aluminium cans) into sorting chutes. As one example, importing one ton of recycled waste, the customs tariff is $2000 RMB which is about $300 USD. 0000018669 00000 n Following Pen and his daughter Yi Jie, under the watchful eye of boss Kun, this film shows the lives of those harmed most by severe social inequality. All together, these measures are aligned with the countrys 2060 carbon neutrality targets. Back in the 1960s, more than 100 children - mostly abandoned, mostly babies and mostly girls - were brought over from Hong Kong to be adopted by British families. The terror of such enforcement of birth limits was widespread in Linyi, even if residents were not themselves planning on giving birth. , resulting in mounting plastic packaging. Yvan Schulz obtained his PhD from the Anthropology Institute, University of Neuchtel in February 2018. We desperately need large-scale investment into domestic recycling plants paired with less garbage being tossed aside every day by us, the ones who buy and discard, day in and day out. First of all his film tackles the problem of labour exploitation. In sum, China's exercise of power has been more hard than soft. Once again, though, Wang has a holistic way of tackling the issue, and his real concern is Chinas changing relationship to the land under capitalisma broad project if there ever was one. B!$H BBAZ[:]nu+n:utvw=vvw9}#AaH"\mAnirF~'U44`~4w~gqci)kJ I wanted to find out the origin of the garbage and realized that they were importing waste from the west and other developed countries, even in Asia, like Japan and Korea.. However, the films relevance extends far beyond the issue of waste management. AFP via Getty Images A portrait of poverty, ambition and hope set in a world of waste. A recent book helps explain how PRC leaders think about the . The photographer-turned-director's debut documentary, 2011's Beijing Besieged by. Ten years after China's infant milk tragedy, parents still won't trust their babies to local formula . Whats more, about 91% of all plastic that has ever been made is not recycled, meaning that plastic which can take up to 500 years to decompose keeps accumulating and degrading our natural environments. Midway through its annual session, China's ceremonial parliament is focusing on boosting the economy, building self-reliance in technology and further squeezing room for political opposition in Hong Kong. After 25 years as the world's salvage king, China refused to buy any recycled plastic scrap that wasn't 99.5 percent pure-a move that upended a $200 billion global recycling industry with. The seventh child, a boy, Liu Zhuang drowned at the age of five, and his mother says she cries every. 0000024672 00000 n It followed reports in the Age last month that revealed thousands tonnes of soft. 0000016680 00000 n {&L Q4t)o('aJ. The rest was buried in landfills or simply dumped and left to wash into rivers and . 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. At some point, Wang Kun pushes for Yijie to attend a local kindergarten, even offering to cover the costs, yet Yijies father, Peng Wenyuan, refuses, preferring that she continue to sort plastics, do household chores, and take care of her younger siblings. 0000001204 00000 n Kate Sheehy. To subscribe to email alerts for each issue of the Journal, newly published books, and information about upcoming events, please provide your contact information below. Plastic China 's portrait of a migrant worker and his family, and the factory's ambitious owner, is touching and saddening, and puts a human face on the problems caused by China's rush to. 9 U4W6}-+c\y^xu^`88^iY :\`PrAiSvF5f19/L2Jh206X The daughter of a young plastic factory worker, Yi Jie, looks over a heap of plastic while cradling her baby sibling. For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. In the U.S. alone, some 26.7 million tons were sent out of the country between 1988 and. Plastic China focuses on materially ambitious factory-owner Kun, his employee Peng, and their families. 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 . Officials in her village were actively policing families under the one-child policy. We promise, no spam! 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. You might also like: Chinas Refusal to Take Back Food Containers Exposes Hong Kongs Broken Plastic Waste Management System. The news hit hard in the United States, which is home to about 60,000 children adopted from China, mostly girls. While the ban has potentially helped China reduce its domestic plastic pollution, it barely made a dent in reducing global waste and instead, shifted the responsibility to other poorer countries. Wangs camera catches heartbreaking images of Jie, the preteen with a collapsing weight of responsibility on her young shoulders. In China, plastic pollution is starkly evident . The fact that the children are alive at all makes Chen, the lawyer, feel his seven years in prison and house arrest were all worth it. Its actually incredible that the film, which calls into question the Chinese governments devotion to environmentalism and the welfare of its people, actually made it out of the country. The Yangtze river, the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world, is an important water body in China. The detailed roadmap includes measures to phase out single-use plastics and targets for cutting plastic production, reduce plastic waste destined for landfills, and boost recycling efforts (with specific targets like 85% of agricultural plastic film to be recycled). 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 . An Australian paper company called Pratt Industries built a paper mill in Ohio to take. A familiar margarine packet among the mountains of rubbish in a backyard recycling facility on China. Yet the authorities still only allow couples to have three children. 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. That same year, he expressed his intention to undertake a follow-up project on waste imports beyond plastics, which he tentatively titled Dumping Ground of the World (shijie de laji chang) (Liu 2014). Inside, a middle-school student completes his homework. There is one obvious, clear, imperative measure that we all must make a priority- we must reduce the amount of plastics we use every day. hide caption. Image by: Our World in Data. Aware of its rapidly growing e-commerce industries, the government is pushing all retail, e-commerce and express parcel delivery businesses to slash unreasonable use of disposable plastic packaging by 2025, an to have at least 10 million reusable boxes for express delivery in use. 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 . Beijing seems to be neither "biding its time" nor rising peacefully. trailer <<4243014C4E284DEB98C83941C307E81B>]/Prev 529831>> startxref 0 %%EOF 74 0 obj <>stream But some babies were alive when they were born and began crying. Wang is a recognised authority on the topic of waste in China. Puren was the youngest brother of the final Qing monarch Puyi, who ruled for four years until 1912. He used a pickax to drive them off and was imprisoned for that for half a year. 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. Updated. His mother watches him approvingly. There are over 5,000 little unregulated recycling plants in the town alone, giving Wang plenty of subject options. Plastic China focuses on materially ambitious factory-owner Kun, his employee Peng, and . In this rugged hardpan of north China known for poverty and coal, Zhang Yi had but two frail daughters to help scratch out a living. hide caption. First, this narrow focus fails to do justice to the richness and complexity of Wangs second, cinema version of Plastic China, whichunlike the first version targeting the pressconstitutes a broad social commentary and critique. A deliberate shift in consumption will not happen overnight. In the last two years, the issue of waste exports to China has attractedconsiderable mediaand public attention. She babysits, cooks, works and teaches her three younger siblings while her parents do the same back-breaking work day in and day out. Environmental News, Data Analysis, Research & Policy Solutions. A Chinese family has been forced to give up their pet dog after realizing they had actually adopted a black bear. At that point, it was already the world's most populous country. Anxious about already strained public education and health care systems, China's leadership is reportedly considering ditching limits entirely. The man wants to remain unnamed because he believes he could be harassed again for speaking of that time. This is obvious in, among others, his choice of topic (Chinas economic growth and opening to the world as experienced by the countrys underclass), his relationships with subjects (long-term involvement, much like that of an anthropologist), and his cinematographic style (observational realism involving on-the-spot and spontaneous shooting, a director who stands behind the camera, and the absence of voiceover). Yeah, in China you'll meet tons of people who had siblings born while the one-child policy was in effect. The Great Entrenchment: An Unofficial Synopsis of Twentieth Party Congress Spirit. 0000010492 00000 n In the film, the main character, a bright girl named Peng Yijie, does not attend school, although she is already 11 years old. Yet, towards the end of the film, the Wangs spend their entire savingsand even borrow moneyto purchase a vehicle for which they seem to have little practical need. Chen, the lawyer, mounted a class action lawsuit on behalf of Linyi's women. To compare, Europe produces about 19% of global plastics while North America is responsible for 18%. Alex Wong/Getty Images The Qing . In China recycling is done by the trash collectors who specialize in different kinds of refuse rubber, aluminum, tin, plastic, paper and either collect these materials by going house to house or sort through the garbage, selling what they find to traders. Twenty-something Kun is a hard worker with a dream of buying a new car to boost his social status. The family, who lives near the city of Kunming in Yunnan province, adopted what . This change will not be easy, but it must be done. hide caption, "The doctors would inject poison directly into the baby's skull to kill it," Chen says, drawing on recordings he made of interviews with hundreds of women and their families in Linyi. 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. Another factor that justifies adopting a broad interpretation of Plastic China is the wide range of social issues addressed by Wang. His research explores Chinas state project of ecological modernisation from the angle of e-waste reuse and recycling. 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. 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. Maybe we would care about the health of those living at the bottom of the social ladder if we were a part their lives for 90 minutes. China has imported 45 percent of the world's plastic refuse since 1992, allowing many other countries, including the United States, to dodge the question of how to process the unwanted material, a . Parents were not penalized for having twins, at least not according to the letter of the law. Based on current rates, the countrys total population could reach up to 1.46 billion by 2028, resulting in even high amounts of waste. This includes a ban on free shopping and carrier bags a 2016 survey data showed plastic bags in supermarkets and shopping malls has reduced by more than two thirds and a ban on the production, retail, and use of any plastic bag with a thickness of less than 0.025 mm. That's up from 152 million ten years. In 2020 alone, China produced about 60 million tonnes of plastic waste, yet only 16 million tonnes of which was recycled, according to the China National Resources Recycling Association. The plant manager, Kun, has his own dreams of one day owning a fancy car and heading back to the city, and desperately tries to convince Peng to send his daughter to the local school. The aspect of the film that most stuck with me personally was how Plastic China depicted the poor standard of waste management in rural China. After all, this type of message is consistent with recent official discourse and practice, which lay great emphasis on environmental protection, leadership in global trade, and national sovereignty. As a result of ocean plastic pollution, where plastics slowly break down into smaller debris and particles called microplastics. The documentary is also a meditation on issues of gender inequality. Not only does the country consume, at least one fifth of the worlds plastics. So the mother went into hiding to carry her son to term. The ubiquitous and pervasive plastic can be found in almost all parts of our daily lives thanks to its convenience and low prices. 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. I saw the manager pointing to some of the garbage that was being sent out and saying, Those are going to China, and I said, what? 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. Her dreams are daydreams, a way for her to escape the harsh reality she experiences on a daily basis. On average, only about 17% of the plastic used in China is recycled in some shape or form. 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. The best parallel to it for Americans is to think of it like marijuana laws. , where in 2019, it reportedly churned out about 5.3 million tonnes of plastics. Fish makes up the majority of diets for many people in China. 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. This means that people eating fish have also been consuming plastics. 0000009053 00000 n "There is no use in trying to make sense of society. To the US and other developed countries, that's a lot less trouble to export waste to China. 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. , it is also the single largest producer and exporter of single-use and virgin plastics (meaning new plastics made without any recycled materials), and up until 2018, the largest importer of plastic as well. Answer (1 of 7): Hi, from the grandchild of 3 families that would probably be considered bourgeois before 49 Family 1: Paternal Grandfather family, granted this was a quirky case as he was the son of a landlord (the most dominant family in that village for sure. 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. In August 2014, the little girl was able to go to school and she is in third grade now. November 15, 2022. In one interview about the film, Wang stated that: China is a country that is facelifted, concealed, faked and unnatural. When his wife became pregnant again, he hoped for a son,. If anything, there is considerable overlap between Wangs film and the foreign waste rhetoric that accompanies state authorities action in the field of transboundary movements of waste since the early 2010s, and predates the ban announced in July 2017. !(^^\(c-RUFkEE The low grade plastics normally sent to China consisted of plastic bags, food labels, coffee cups and more- all products that are normally used once before being tossed away. 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. It all started with a mint julep on a hot summer day. Today's top India news headlines, news on Indian politics, elections, government, business, technology, and Bollywood. August 4, 2020 1:46pm. Director Jiu-liang Wang is one of the few documentary filmmakers in China to have taken on the government and won. "Despite all the overwhelming demographic evidence, they're saying, 'We need to control you,'" says the author, Fong. As research on plastic and its detriments on the environment increasingly pop up on our news feeds, its obvious that weve reached a breaking point. The brother of China's last emperor who was pushed off the throne more than 100 years ago has died. There is something profoundly disturbing in the Wangs purchase of a shiny new sedan car. A further issue highlighted in the film is that of conspicuous consumption. We all must initiate a seismic cultural shift that sees a serious slowing down of our relentless consumerism. Not only does the country consume at least one fifth of the worlds plastics, it is also the single largest producer and exporter of single-use and virgin plastics (meaning new plastics made without any recycled materials), and up until 2018, the largest importer of plastic as well. During that time, imperial China was replaced by the Republic of China. Chen had been persecuted and detained in China after his work advising villagers and speaking out official abuses under the one-child rule. WUHAN, China Zhang Hai has a warning to World Health Organization-led scientists researching the origin of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China: Don't be fooled. Director Jiu-liang Wang is one of the few documentary filmmakers in China to have taken on the government and won. 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. As a grownup in China, I share a responsibility of finding ways to make the country a better place to live., James Camerons attack on Netflix gets 2 major things wrong and one right, Missing is a worn out techno-thriller less exciting than a doomscroll, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes could be the reboot the franchise needs, By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. "All we can do is go on living," she says. But even there Johnson found numerous stories of families going to great lengths . 0000039672 00000 n 0000019453 00000 n In 2020 alone, China produced about 60 million tonnes of plastic waste, yet only 16 million tonnes of which was recycled, according to the China National Resources Recycling Association. She wanted to avoid the "family planning officials" in her home village, just outside Linyi, a city of 11 million in China's northern Shandong province, where the policy's enforcement was especially violent. Its massive local plastic production further contributes to Chinas lion share of global greenhouse emissions mainly from coal production. China Says It Will Allow Couples to Have 3 Children, Up From 2 The move is the Communist Party's latest attempt to reverse declining birthrates and avert a population crisis, but experts say it. "Officials would kidnap you if you tried to have two children. 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And their families out official abuses under the one-child rule has relied on superficial targeting. It all started with a dream of buying a new car to boost his social.... Is recycled in some shape or form greenhouse emissions mainly from coal production many people in China young.. A new car to boost his social status is about $ 300 USD documentary, &... The issue of waste exports to China consumption will not happen overnight it reportedly churned out about million... Age of five, and supports and houses nearly one-third of the law far! Countrys 2060 carbon neutrality targets into rivers and in 2019, it reportedly churned out about 5.3 tonnes...