0000017207 00000 n 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. China implemented the policy of limiting each family to one child in 1979 to slow the growth of the country's population. No one can afford that," she complains. Just like Beijing Besieged by Waste, the movie uncovers a gnarly scene beyond the cosmopolitan city. 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. NPR isn't using her name to protect her identity because of the trauma she suffered. Its a moving film about the individuals left to deal with the First Worlds trash, and while I enjoy documentaries that throw big, scary facts at me, I believe Wang omitted some objective information for a reason. Today, he lives in Maryland with his family. There are clear signs that this space is shrinking nowadays, yet this does not stop many independent filmmakers from pursuing their mission (Berry 2017). 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. 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 brings us to the topic of censorship. But the legacy of the one-child rule is still painfully felt by many parents who suffered for having multiple children. It is against this backdrop that Plastic China came out in 2016. The Yangtze river, the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world, is an important water body in China. The . A portrait of poverty, ambition and hope set in a world of waste. The film premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in November 2016, and was shown at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. 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. "Despite all the overwhelming demographic evidence, they're saying, 'We need to control you,'" says the author, Fong. He was able to fly to the U.S. after weeks of tense negotiation. Director Jiu-liang Wang is one of the few documentary filmmakers in China to have taken on the government and won. CNN . China is also by far the largest source of mismanaged plastic waste, and is the biggest offender of ocean plastic pollution. 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. It followed reports in the Age last month that revealed thousands tonnes of soft. Giving birth to him was a huge risk and she took no chances. 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. The Qing . 0000020209 00000 n Ng Han Guan/AP But the country is not ignorant of its environmental impacts, and has moved to take more aggressive strides to combat this exponentially growing problem. The terror of such enforcement of birth limits was widespread in Linyi, even if residents were not themselves planning on giving birth. The British colony simply. 0000001806 00000 n "Women have it all figured out now they won't have more kids even when they're told to have more!" "That requires buying them a car, an apartment. 0000017854 00000 n The U.S., Japan and Germany are all at the top of the list when it comes to exporting their used plastic. This ambitious plan requires the full participation of producers to consumers and is an inspirational idea, though I hadnt even heard of it before digging through plastic research, and it doesnt seem to be very widely discussed. 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). "The one-child policy was not the only thing that happened in China in the 1980s and 1990s," Gietel-Basten says. LINYI, China Outside, rain falls. It reveals the huge challenges faced by Xis project of poverty eradication (xiaochu pinkun). Thats the main source of outward tension in the film, though the squalor in which they all live is a painful commentary on the costs of rapid growth in such a stratified country. 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. This is on top of the fact that Chinas population is growing by 0.5% on average annually. 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. 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. 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. Katherine Martinko is a writer and expert in sustainable living. What is the current state of plastic pollution in China and how does the country deal with it? 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. Next up: A new doc called Plastic China, which played at the Sundance Film Festival and screened as part of the Documentary Fortnight at the Museum of Modern Art on February 23rd. 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. 0000024672 00000 n She is especially protective of him. Inside, a middle-school student completes his homework. Since taking office as president, Xi Jinping has striven to distinguish his government from the previous one. Andy Wong/AP 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. "There is no point in controlling them. Single's Day, China's biggest online shopping holiday akin to Black Friday in the U.S. is a recognition of the many bachelors who are unable to find partners in a gender-skewed society. Global mismanaged waste in total. https%3A%2F%2Fearth.org%2Fchina-plastic-pollution%2F. A Chinese couple whose son was abducted in a hotel in 1988 have been reunited with him after 32 years. What happened to the little girl in plastic China? Global plastic waste generation by country. Updated. This means that people eating fish have also been consuming plastics. 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. "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. Yeah, in China you'll meet tons of people who had siblings born while the one-child policy was in effect. The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children. When his wife became pregnant again, he hoped for a son,. Products. There are two younger boys, Liu Zhuang, 5 and Liu Jian, 4, as well as newly born twin sisters. Interestingly, it does not look further into waste imports, as Wang had originally planned, but instead addresses construction and real estates impact on the surface of the earth, in particular through mineral extraction and the desolate landscapes it produces in China (Wang 2016). , where in 2019, it reportedly churned out about 5.3 million tonnes of plastics. Yvan Schulz obtained his PhD from the Anthropology Institute, University of Neuchtel in February 2018. of plastic inputs in oceans while putting China at 7%. Her body was giving her all the telltale signs that she was pregnant again. of the plastic used in China is recycled in some shape or form. 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. Beijing Besieged by Waste and Plastic China recall the work of Wang Bing (see Renard et al. ! Wang recalled. Parents were not penalized for having twins, at least not according to the letter of the law. His research explores Chinas state project of ecological modernisation from the angle of e-waste reuse and recycling. $2599 ($0.87/Count) Save more with Subscribe & Save. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. of mismanaged plastic waste, and is the biggest offender of ocean plastic pollution. After six months of getting to know two families who worked at one small plant, Wang was allowed intimate access to their lives. Image by: Our World in Data. A portrait of poverty, ambition and hope set in a world of waste. Some demographers in China argue that instituting birth limits was necessary for keeping birth rates low. . The brother of China's last emperor who was pushed off the throne more than 100 years ago has died. ", 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. His descendants inherited his d. As one example, importing one ton of recycled waste, the customs tariff is $2000 RMB which is about $300 USD. 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. hide caption, "I had already had two children but my heart just did not feel right," says the woman, now in her 50s, who works part time in a canning factory. There are over 5,000 little unregulated recycling plants in the town alone, giving Wang plenty of subject options. 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. In the cinema version of Plastic China, the concept of labour exploitation applies more clearly within China and even among former peasants than it does between China and the highly industrialised countries from which waste is imported. 0000019453 00000 n It has been ten months since China closed its doors to the world's recycling waste. Plastic China: Directed by Jiuliang Wang. You need an active subscription to post a comment. They dont know how the United States really is, because all they have received is information from Chinese TV, which is made by the Ministry of Media, Wang said. On average, only about 17% of the plastic used in China is recycled in some shape or form. Boss Kun and his workers separate plastics by burning samples and quickly sniffing the fumes, stimulating God only knows what kinds of cancers and brain damage. 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. 0000003242 00000 n 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. For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. 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. 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. One ton of unsorted waste was sold to China for about $9. China used to take much of it, but has banned imports of plastic waste so where does it now go? The suit led to an apology from the authorities in Linyi and a reduction in the kidnappings, beatings and forced abortions. At some point, Wang Kun pushes for Yijie to attend a local kindergarten, even offering to cover the costs, yet Yijies father, Peng Wenyuan, refuses, preferring that she continue to sort plastics, do household chores, and take care of her younger siblings. This includes a ban on free shopping and carrier bags a. showed plastic bags in supermarkets and shopping malls has reduced by more than two thirds and a ban on the production, retail, and use of any plastic bag with a thickness of less than 0.025 mm. "If you carry it with you all the time, it gets too tiring.". In 2016, the Ontario government released its Strategy for a Waste-Free Ontario, diverting our wasteful ways towards a completely circular economy (zero-waste) by 2050. This prompted the Chinese government to introduce a raft of new laws and regulations to limit plastic waste in 2020, and announced a plan for 2021 to 2025 which aims to further improve the management of the entire chain of plastic pollution. Plastic China focuses on materially ambitious factory-owner Kun, his employee Peng, and their families. In China, plastic pollution is starkly evident . The LEGO Foundation is awarding a total of DKK 900 million (approximately US$ 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. The rationale for implementing the policy was to reduce the growth rate of China's enormous population. He asks Wang Kun, his boss and the owner of the recycling workshop the Pengs work in, for a raise. 43 0 obj <> endobj xref 43 32 0000000016 00000 n 0000439869 00000 n While more time is needed to analyse the bans impacts domestically, it has had rippling effects across global plastic pollution and management. Following the accepted narrative about China, its citizens might be expected to worship sons and disdain daughters. discovered that all 21 species of sea fish and freshwater fish from Chinese waters that were examined have ingested plastic. 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. This targeted Boosting helps us to reach wider audiences aiming to convince the unconvinced, to inform the uninformed, to enlighten the dogmatic. 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). With almost a spooky resemblance to Wildenstein, the Bogdanoff brothers - like her - are still injecting and filling into their seventies. Two of the more tragic examples - who were born identical twins and appear to be twinning themselves with duelling plastic surgeries - are French TV stars Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff. 0000002606 00000 n 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. In China, plastic pollution is starkly evident, attributed largely to the fact that the country is the worlds biggest producer and consumer of plastics. The man wants to remain unnamed because he believes he could be harassed again for speaking of that time. 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. Editor's note: This story contains descriptions that may be disturbing. Please help us make our goal! 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. According to the report, his wife was forced to confess that before her marriage, she had spent 60,000 on plastic surgery in South Korea, and looked completely different to how she was born. Trailer for 'Plastic China' film by director Wang Jiuliang. Wangs first two films reveal the strong influence of what some refer to as Chinas new documentary movement (Berry and Rofel 2010). 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 global plastic pollution crisis continues to worsen every year. 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 . 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. That part of the industry is very sensitive, and if you have nothing to do with them, you cant get in, Wang said. 0000023972 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. Han Dynasty Emperor Xian of Han, the last emperor of Han dynasty died as a duke. When the ancestral temples were destroyed most families lost the records of their extended family. HdU{PSW? 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 . 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). It was announced in late 2015 that the program was to end in early 2016. , 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. Among contributing factors was Plastic China (suliao wangguo, 2016), a documentary directed by Wang Jiuliang. 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. He rose to prominence a few years ago thanks to his first film, Beijing Besieged by Waste (laji weicheng, 2012), which revealed the existence of a great number of unauthorised and unmonitored dumpsites around Beijing. In their imagination, its kind of like a more advanced, beautiful, and powerful place those are the words most common in Chinese peoples minds.. 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. hide caption. Director Jiu-liang Wang is one of the few documentary filmmakers in China to have taken on the government and won. Jan. 1 marked a significant cultural shift in China starting this year, families will be able to have two children. 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. 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 .
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