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). Puren was the youngest brother of the final Qing monarch Puyi, who ruled for four years until 1912. An Arkansas man who received one of the mysterious seed packages sent to thousands of US residents from China planted them on his property and said . In the U.S. alone, some 26.7 million tons were sent out of the country between 1988 and. 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 . 0000003466 00000 n Despite this, plastic waste continues to soar partly due to the relatively low cost of plastic bags shoppers are therefore not deterred to pay for one and the rapid rise of e-commerce, and delivery services, resulting in mounting plastic packaging. The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children. You might also like: Chinas Refusal to Take Back Food Containers Exposes Hong Kongs Broken Plastic Waste Management System. Inside, a middle-school student completes his homework. 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. The daughter of a young plastic factory worker, Yi Jie, looks over a heap of plastic while cradling her baby sibling. Viewers learn that this has to do with her status as a migrant, her familys meagre earnings, and her fathers alcoholism. 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. Almost certainly, a proportion will have come from the homes, or more specifically the recycling bins, of Australia. 0000035786 00000 n "The policy was wrong and what we did with Chen was right," says a neighbor of Chen, the lawyer who sued the city of Linyi. A portrait of poverty, ambition and hope set in a world of waste. But Chinas contribution to the global plastic crisis does not end there. But there was tension amid the squalor, as the plant manager and his one employee clashed over the education and ambition of the employees 11-year-old daughter. Its river basin comprises one-fifth of the countrys land area, and supports and houses nearly one-third of the population. During that time, imperial China was replaced by the Republic of China. China boosts electric car fleet for public transport, Support award-winning independent journalism with Dr. Anthony Youn believes there are clear signs of a face-lift on Priscilla's face. The young girl would love to visit the United States, but shed settle for going to school something her father, Peng, an alcoholic who works for the plant manager, has no interest in making happen. The Ocean Cleanup aims to remove 90 per cent of plastic waste from oceans The organisation has designed 600-metre-long plastic barriers designed to passively gather plastic as they float. His mother watches him approvingly. When asked about the dangers facing him, Wang just shrugged. 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. AFP via Getty Images It was followed very selectively. 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. B!$H BBAZ[:]nu+n:utvw=vvw9}#AaH"\mAnirF~'U44`~4w~gqci)kJ 2a cmAAASDMn,!T+FrHV`)sbg:\8B@}Np(D3uOGh1.\8}) n"%UtZ-)9Kn>{b^xFrn{g(dX J1( O. "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. Not only does the country consume, at least one fifth of the worlds plastics. "This was not your average level of policy enforcement. 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. Wangs 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. 0000016680 00000 n Now, the countrys import ban has pushed some developed countries to find ways. HdU{PSW? Director Jiu-liang Wang is one of the few documentary filmmakers in China to have taken on the government and won. 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. In China, plastic pollution is starkly evident . "If you carry it with you all the time, it gets too tiring.". It is against this backdrop that Plastic China came out in 2016. No one can afford that," she complains. Either the government is already losing faith in the reality of its implementation, or it needs a bigger budget for advertising. The countrys populist leader, Premier Wen Jiabao, had the illegal ring of refuse sites investigated and then cleaned up, which was at once a major victory and just the beginning of Wangs dive into the dirty downside to Chinas capitalist surge. As the biggest plastic producer on the globe, it should come to no surprise that China is also home to about a third of the worlds companies operating single-use plastic production facilities, with one of the biggest culprits being oil and gas firm Sinopec. , 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. Several experts I engaged with in recent months put forward the idea that the film prompted officials in Beijing to take this kind of action, or at least influenced them significantly (see also L 2018). 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. 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. There are over 5,000 little unregulated recycling plants in the town alone, giving Wang plenty of subject options. {&L Q4t)o('aJ. 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. 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. The Great Entrenchment: An Unofficial Synopsis of Twentieth Party Congress Spirit. It all started with a mint julep on a hot summer day. Katherine Martinko is a writer and expert in sustainable living. He asks Wang Kun, his boss and the owner of the recycling workshop the Pengs work in, for a raise. 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. New York CNN Business . discovered that all 21 species of sea fish and freshwater fish from Chinese waters that were examined have ingested plastic. When the inevitable collapse came, most of the companies went bankrupt, leaving city authorities having to pay to clean up the mess. On Jan. 1, China enacted new legislation allowing all married couples to have two children. $2599 ($0.87/Count) Save more with Subscribe & Save. 0000018669 00000 n 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. It was featured in numerous festivals outside China, and has won several awards. Much of the Western worlds waste was once bound for China. 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. 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. First of all his film tackles the problem of labour exploitation. 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). Officials in her village were actively policing families under the one-child policy. This brings us to the topic of censorship. However, the films relevance extends far beyond the issue of waste management. November 15, 2022. Plastic pollution has long plagued China, along with severe air pollution. Beijing seems to be neither "biding its time" nor rising peacefully. His focus on the daily life of two families in a shared domestic space, where exploitation unfolds in an intimate setting, allows him to give an otherwise commonplace phenomenon a particularly raw and emotional dimension. 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. For decades, China's family planning policy limited most urban couples to one child and rural couples to two if their first was a girl. The smiles that break across their grubby faces belie a bleak existence for the families that scrape by sorting plastic waste. LINYI, China Outside, rain falls. 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. Yvan Schulz obtained his PhD from the Anthropology Institute, University of Neuchtel in February 2018. 0000009529 00000 n The man wants to remain unnamed because he believes he could be harassed again for speaking of that time. This is on top of the fact that Chinas population is growing by 0.5% on average annually. Twenty years later, the volume of. These economic penalties depleted his life savings, a financial impact that compounded over the ensuing years. 0000439869 00000 n Welcome to Wang Jiuliangs 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. 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.. Kun closed down the factory and became a truck driver a year after [the film] was made. 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 . 43 0 obj <> endobj xref 43 32 0000000016 00000 n Parents were not penalized for having twins, at least not according to the letter of the law. The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children. "Despite all the overwhelming demographic evidence, they're saying, 'We need to control you,'" says the author, Fong. How China's plastic waste ban forced a global recycling reckoning. China is also by far the. Part of the reason she demurred when first speaking to NPR was because of how dearly her family fought for his birth. To compare, Europe produces about 19% of global plastics while North America is responsible for 18%. hide caption. 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. trailer <<4243014C4E284DEB98C83941C307E81B>]/Prev 529831>> startxref 0 %%EOF 74 0 obj <>stream 0000024672 00000 n Such a context makes it very risky for the latter to adopt a long-term perspective and invest in new equipment or techniques. A deliberate shift in consumption will not happen overnight. One night in August 2008, the mother made a fateful decision. The Pengs precarious existence and the fact that they are basically left to fend for themselves is striking for both Chinese and foreign viewers. It has been slow to completely dismantle its massive family planning bureaucracy built up over the past four decades. On average, only about 17% of the plastic used in China is recycled in some shape or form. Image from 'Plastic China' documentary website. The limit in most cases was just one child. Medical staff massage babies at an infant care center in Yongquan, in Chongqing municipality, in southwest China, on Dec. 15, 2016. 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. Wang turned his focus to imported plastic, and after some digging, learned that it was being brought to a little town in the province of Shandong, along the coast. 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%. He saves his scant earnings to send his three-year-old son to school while Peng displays no such concern for his four, soon to be five, children. The ban was initiated in January of this year and undoubtedly the shockwaves are being felt in the international community as countries look to Asia for another foreign landfill. It was announced in late 2015 that the program was to end in early 2016. 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. 0000020209 00000 n 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. ", A child walks near government propaganda one of which reads "1.3 billion people united" on the streets of Beijing, China, Tuesday, March 8, 2016. 0000001315 00000 n When his wife became pregnant again, he hoped for a son,. 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. Ran Zheng for NPR In 2016, the Ontario government released its Strategy for a Waste-Free Ontario, diverting our wasteful ways towards a completely circular economy (zero-waste) by 2050. 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 success of the first film got Wang invited to California, where he toured recycling plants as part of his next round of research. He and his wife persevered and had three sons. The new documentary 'Plastic China' plunges into the dirty side of recycling. The doctors strangled or drowned those babies.". CNN . It was featured in numerous festivals outside China, and has won several awards. Some businesses have stepped up, too. Climate. The British colony simply. 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. Her son is part of the last generation of children in China whose births were ruled illegal at the time. 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. Ten years after China's infant milk tragedy, parents still won't trust their babies to local formula . 0000001781 00000 n Along the belt, human workers pick and channel what is valuable (bottles, cardboard, aluminium cans) into sorting chutes. State media celebrated the news. This has lead to a major shift in China, family is now seen as the 3 living generations . In the film we witness Kun and his family looking for a new car, despite the fact that their old family van continues to serve them fairly well. Since the first protest on Nov. 26th, demonstrations popped up in every area of the country. 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. The people who had a stake in it did not welcome the shooting.. The . As a result of ocean plastic pollution, where plastics slowly break down into smaller debris and particles called microplastics. one-child policy, official program initiated in the late 1970s and early '80s by the central government of China, the purpose of which was to limit the great majority of family units in the country to one child each. Following the accepted narrative about China, its citizens might be expected to worship sons and disdain daughters. By the container load, the cast-off plastic comes from Korea, Europe and the US. Director Jiu-Liang Wang refers to PLASTIC CHINA as a title which riffs on the idea of plastic surgerya way of masking the underlying physical truth of any given situation. Please help us make our goal! But Chinas contribution to the global plastic crisis does not end there. It now collects its community's plastic trash and turns it into fuel. Its no longer enough to be content with simply re-using bags or buying a ceramic coffee mug. Today's top India news headlines, news on Indian politics, elections, government, business, technology, and Bollywood. Beijing Besieged by Waste and Plastic China recall the work of Wang Bing (see Renard et al. If you were hiding and they could not find you, they would kidnap your elder relatives and make them stand in cold water, in the winter," remembers Lu Bilun, a resident. 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. of the plastic used in China is recycled in some shape or form. the mother laughs helplessly. Without a fundamental cultural shift in our societys grievous over-use of plastic, we will see the same mountains of scraps growing in our pristine backyards just like Peng, Kun, and Yi Jie see everyday. Boost this article 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. "I thought this is it if I do not have this child, my body will not be able to have any more.". 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. 0000017207 00000 n China used to take much of it, but has banned imports of plastic waste so where does it now go? While more time is needed to analyse the bans impacts domestically, it has had rippling effects across global plastic pollution and management. No full, official . 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. Based on current rates, the countrys total population could reach up to 1.46 billion by 2028, resulting in even high amounts of waste. Ng Han Guan/AP A Chinese family has been forced to give up their pet dog after realizing they had actually adopted a black bear. 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. He was able to fly to the U.S. after weeks of tense negotiation. Among contributing factors was Plastic China (suliao wangguo, 2016), a documentary directed by Wang Jiuliang. She wants to start preparing for her son's marriage a costly endeavor as rural families expect the husband to provide a material guarantee for any future wife. "I really feel happy. hide caption. Its massive local plastic production further contributes to Chinas lion share of global greenhouse emissions mainly from coal production. The REDcycle program which was suspended in November and points at Coles and Woolworths supermarkets were closed. 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. Today, the world produces nearly 350 million tonnes of plastic waste, which is projected to double by 2040 if no action is taken. Yet the authorities still only allow couples to have three children. There were virtually no incentives to comply with environmental and safety regulation, and local authorities made little effort to improve the sectorin large part because officials at the village or town level had a stake in rapid, unbridled economic growth. But as these shocking plastic pollution statistics show, the world at large generates at least 350 million tonnes of plastic waste every year, making it one of the biggest environmental problems of our lifetime. A portrait of poverty, ambition and hope set in a world of waste. Editor's note: This story contains descriptions that may be disturbing. So the mother went into hiding to carry her son to term. A burning armoured personnel carrier on 4 June 1989, near Tiananmen Square. She demurs, her voice growing quiet. We all must initiate a seismic cultural shift that sees a serious slowing down of our relentless consumerism. However, the film is all too often reduced to its function as a tool for denouncing environmental dumping. 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 . The suit led to an apology from the authorities in Linyi and a reduction in the kidnappings, beatings and forced abortions. A familiar margarine packet among the mountains of rubbish in a backyard recycling facility on China. It is very clear that the families are living in unregulated, shockingly toxic environments generating severe impacts on the outside world; throughout the film we see such a staggering amount of garbage that a shot of sheep and a patch of plastic-strewn grass seems oddly out-of-place. 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. When the ancestral temples were destroyed most families lost the records of their extended family. "There is only one China and there is only one one-child policy, so it is kind of impossible to say the real effect of that was [of the policy]," he says. "It has been so many years, and I have let the pain go," the mother of three says, eyes downcast. 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. Mao Yin was snatched aged two, while his father stopped to get him some water on the way home. Some demographers in China argue that instituting birth limits was necessary for keeping birth rates low. This change will not be easy, but it must be done. The mother of one of these middle schoolers holds her son close. It reveals the huge challenges faced by Xis project of poverty eradication (xiaochu pinkun). Jan. 1 marked a significant cultural shift in China starting this year, families will be able to have two children. The news hit hard in the United States, which is home to about 60,000 children adopted from China, mostly girls. The film does not tell its audience how this situation came about, but it is easy to associate it with rural migrants generally limited access to healthcare. The picture of Chinas gender regime that emerges from Plastic China is one of entrenched patriarchy, at least in the countryside, where boys are still valued more than girls (zhongnan qingn). This film debuted two years ago, but its relevance is striking in the wake of Chinas sudden refusal to continue importing foreign waste. Get focused newsletters especially designed to be concise and easy to digest. siQ6_{#WP(*K9-4GF(NTZ,GI2RV#PF"@(!9BI-$(E^D]ut(nK Jgu")( D)" His mother watches him approvingly. Written on 17 January 2019. For instance, Gurao, once Chinas largest bra manufacturing hub, struggles with waste-related pollution of comparable gravity to that of neighbouring Guiyu, the countrys infamous e-waste recycling capital. 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. To compare, Europe produces about 19% of global plastics while North America is responsible for 18%. 04:22. 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. 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. Plastic films, plastic bags, the plastic wrapping that comes around a lot of packaged goods, that all goes into the garbage. Because many prioritized having a son over a daughter, orphanages experienced a surge in baby girls who were abandoned or put up for adoption. To the US and other developed countries, that's a lot less trouble to export waste to China. Plastic China focuses on materially ambitious factory-owner Kun, his employee Peng, and their families. hb```"qVta1 FsD 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. Fish makes up the majority of diets for many people in China. Now the world is scrambling to adjust. One can afford that, '' she complains persevered and had three sons ceramic coffee mug outside... Led to An apology from the Anthropology Institute, University of Neuchtel in 2018... And particles what happened to the families in plastic china microplastics very selectively not your average level of policy enforcement waste management.! Monarch Puyi, who ruled for four years until 1912 about the dangers facing him, Wang just.. Children in China is recycled in some shape or form worlds waste was once bound China! To Chinas lion share of global greenhouse emissions mainly from coal production Chinese waters were! 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