This brings us to the topic of censorship. The mother of one of these middle schoolers holds her son close. Directors Jiu-liang Wang Genres Documentary Subtitles English [CC] Even before China's ban, only 9 percent of discarded plastic was being recycled, while 12 percent was burned. 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. Kun closed down the factory and became a truck driver a year after [the film] was made. In the film, the main character, a bright girl named Peng Yijie, does not attend school, although she is already 11 years old. 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. He lived in comfort and was treated preferentially by the Wei court. The photographer-turned-director's debut documentary, 2011's Beijing Besieged by. 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. trailer <<4243014C4E284DEB98C83941C307E81B>]/Prev 529831>> startxref 0 %%EOF 74 0 obj <>stream 0000439946 00000 n The best parallel to it for Americans is to think of it like marijuana laws. 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. Since taking office as president, Xi Jinping has striven to distinguish his government from the previous one. After six months of getting to know two families who worked at one small plant, Wang was allowed intimate access to their lives. Municipalities across Canada are struggling under the weight of the rapidly accumulating plastics with no plan in place to deal with them, and it will continue to worsen if we keep living the way we have been. 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. It reveals the huge challenges faced by Xis project of poverty eradication (xiaochu pinkun). China boosts electric car fleet for public transport, Support award-winning independent journalism with New York CNN Business . A further issue highlighted in the film is that of conspicuous consumption. To the US and other developed countries, that's a lot less trouble to export waste to China. 0000003791 00000 n "This was not your average level of policy enforcement. to reduce and reuse their own plastic waste. 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. Plastic China: Directed by Jiuliang Wang. This change will not be easy, but it must be done. :v9s];"vE\ j{G=vs=_qq/w?/uynBRBViW)42xP.itM"2HX SJXr/^$,^J_gHIum1$OL@*R*06T4W*[>ypNA-y6J]yPW6VV 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. For some, the pain is still too much to bear. Please help us make our goal! 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. In June 2020, directed remotely by their parents in Italy and a cousin in Canada, the four siblings - then aged between 11 and 16 - traveled from their remote village in Xinjiang all the way to. In China, plastic pollution is starkly evident, attributed largely to the fact that the country is the worlds biggest producer and consumer of plastics. Plastic pollution has long plagued China, along with severe air pollution. Environmental News, Data Analysis, Research & Policy Solutions. It was followed very selectively. 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. I came across many such sites while conducting research in semi-industrialised villages and small towns in Guangdong province in the mid-2010s. 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. The limit in most cases was just one child. But last year, China put the kibosh on . 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. Fish makes up the majority of diets for many people in China. 0000003355 00000 n Inside, a middle-school student completes his homework. As a result, awareness of the social and environmental impact of the global trade in recyclables has increased substantially, both within and outside of China. Twenty years later, the volume of. 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. discovered that all 21 species of sea fish and freshwater fish from Chinese waters that were examined have ingested plastic. Today, he lives in Maryland with his family. Global plastic waste generation by country. In 2017, China collected 215 million tonnes of urban household waste, according to the country's statistical yearbook. Alex Wong/Getty Images No full, official . Last October, Jian Feng, a man reportedly from northern China, sued and divorced his wife after she had a daughter who was "incredibly ugly" and did not resemble either parent. China is also by far the largest source of mismanaged plastic waste, and is the biggest offender of ocean plastic pollution. An Australian paper company called Pratt Industries built a paper mill in Ohio to take. Despite censorship, Wang Jiuliang has managed to reach a wide audience with Plastic China, and have considerable impact. ! Wang recalled. 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. So the mother went into hiding to carry her son to term. 0000018669 00000 n Her body was giving her all the telltale signs that she was pregnant again. 04:22. In March 2018, China's environment minister at the time, Li Ganjie, noted that China used to import around 4 to 4.5 million tons of solid, unrecyclable trash. Beijing seems to be neither "biding its time" nor rising peacefully. Why won't China remove all caps? 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. These economic penalties depleted his life savings, a financial impact that compounded over the ensuing years. It's margarine tubs, clamshells, deli containers. "Our main products are paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, mixed plastics . Plastic films, plastic bags, the plastic wrapping that comes around a lot of packaged goods, that all goes into the garbage. 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. Immediately afterwards, he embarked on a new project. The British colony simply. The news hit hard in the United States, which is home to about 60,000 children adopted from China, mostly girls. "There is no point in controlling them. The Yangtze river, the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world, is an important water body in China. 9 U4W6}-+c\y^xu^`88^iY :\`PrAiSvF5f19/L2Jh206X With Plastic China, Wang aimed to raise awareness of his homelands role in the global waste trade, and expose its negative repercussions on the Chinese population and environment. 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 . 0000001204 00000 n 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. Dr. Steven Svehlak and Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Payman Simoni agree. 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. First of all his film tackles the problem of labour exploitation. This also explains why Wang Kuns plastic recycling workshop, like many others, relies on manual labour and a couple of unsophisticated and antiquated machines. The U.S. used to send a lot of its plastic waste to China to get recycled. In this essay, I argue that Plastic China should be considered as a rich social commentary and critique, and interpreted in the light of Chinas tradition of independent documentary-making in the reform era. In the opening credits, Plastic China informs us that China is the worlds largest importer of waste, and throughout the film we are subject to unimaginable images of garbage. In the U.S. alone, some 26.7 million tons were sent out of the country between 1988 and. But Chinas contribution to the global plastic crisis does not end there. %PDF-1.4 % A Chinese family has been forced to give up their pet dog after realizing they had actually adopted a black bear. To compensate for this narrow focus, we need to look beyond the predominant reading. SCn ` ]-3 endstream endobj 44 0 obj <>>> endobj 45 0 obj <>/Font<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageC]/Properties<>/XObject<>>>/Rotate 0/TrimBox[0.0 0.0 595.276 841.89]/Type/Page>> endobj 46 0 obj [47 0 R] endobj 47 0 obj <>/Border[0 0 0]/H/N/Rect[248.776 776.077 346.366 766.333]/Subtype/Link/Type/Annot>> endobj 48 0 obj <> endobj 49 0 obj <> endobj 50 0 obj <> endobj 51 0 obj <> endobj 52 0 obj <> endobj 53 0 obj <>stream The Yangtze river, the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world, is an important water body in China. And so he set off to the rural region where he encountered a lot of resistance from those involved in the remedial waste management industry. Ng Han Guan/AP The success of the first film got Wang invited to California, where he toured recycling plants as part of his next round of research. of plastic inputs in oceans while putting China at 7%. 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. 0000000936 00000 n That's up from 152 million ten years. Since the first protest on Nov. 26th, demonstrations popped up in every area of the country. What is the current state of plastic pollution in China and how does the country deal with it? Families were already having fewer children in the 1970s, before the policy took force in 1979. 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 . , 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. To compare, Europe produces about 19% of global plastics while North America is responsible for 18%. In other words, though it looks good exteriorly, it has a lot of interior problems (Kanthor 2017). The global plastic pollution crisis continues to worsen every year. The policy permeates through Chinese society in other, sometimes unexpected ways. 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. "There was also rapid urbanization, economic growth, industrialization, female emancipation and more female labor force participation. 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. "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. There are two younger boys, Liu Zhuang, 5 and Liu Jian, 4, as well as newly born twin sisters. His mother watches him approvingly. "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. Inside, a middle-school student completes his homework. But Peng has no money, and anyway, Yi-Jie has to take care of her younger siblings and contribute to the recycling work. 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 daughter of a young plastic factory worker, Yi Jie, looks over a heap of plastic while cradling her baby sibling. 0000009529 00000 n 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 people who had a stake in it did not welcome the shooting.. Acquiring this potent status symbol allows them to have the feelingand give others the impressionthat they have achieved wealth, and moved up the social ladder. The terror of such enforcement of birth limits was widespread in Linyi, even if residents were not themselves planning on giving birth. 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). According to the census conducted last year, the population is aging and there are fewer young children and working-age people, a major demographic shift that comes with its own economic strains. You might also like: Chinas Refusal to Take Back Food Containers Exposes Hong Kongs Broken Plastic Waste Management System. For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. This includes a ban on free shopping and carrier bags a. 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. 03:15. 0000017207 00000 n 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. But even there Johnson found numerous stories of families going to great lengths . For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. 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. 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. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children. One night, family planning officials approached her husband, intending to pressure him and his wife into ending the pregnancy. 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. Based on current rates, the countrys total population could reach up to 1.46 billion by 2028, resulting in even high amounts of waste. He was able to fly to the U.S. after weeks of tense negotiation. 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. It was shipping goods to Europe and the States and that enabled a cheap process of shipping the scrap back to China in the holds of the. Its mostly a monotonous existence, consisting largely of wading through imported plastic and trash, and melting it in small industrial vats. "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 . 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. 0000021210 00000 n When the inevitable collapse came, most of the companies went bankrupt, leaving city authorities having to pay to clean up the mess. What was she hiding from? This targeted Boosting helps us to reach wider audiences aiming to convince the unconvinced, to inform the uninformed, to enlighten the dogmatic. The doctors strangled or drowned those babies.". 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. In sum, China's exercise of power has been more hard than soft. It followed reports in the Age last month that revealed thousands tonnes of soft. You need an active subscription to post a comment. His mother watches him approvingly. The suit led to an apology from the authorities in Linyi and a reduction in the kidnappings, beatings and forced abortions. The documentary is also a meditation on issues of gender inequality. 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. B!$H BBAZ[:]nu+n:utvw=vvw9}#AaH"\mAnirF~'U44`~4w~gqci)kJ 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. The main character is the employee's daughter, who never gets sent to school because she is helping her parents watch her younger siblings and sort through mountains of shredded plastic. The U.S., Japan and Germany are all at the top of the list when it comes to exporting their used plastic. As mentioned earlier, China was the largest importer of plastic, taking in waste from many developed countries including the United States, Canada, Germany, and other Western European nations. With almost a spooky resemblance to Wildenstein, the Bogdanoff brothers - like her - are still injecting and filling into their seventies. Its river basin comprises one-fifth of the countrys land area, and supports and houses nearly one-third of the population. 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