Plastic China: Directed by Jiuliang Wang. 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. 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. These economic penalties depleted his life savings, a financial impact that compounded over the ensuing years. 0000022087 00000 n Just like Beijing Besieged by Waste, the movie uncovers a gnarly scene beyond the cosmopolitan city. 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. 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. 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. 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. It is a moment that for many observers has come to define strongman leader Xi Jinping's tightening grip on China: his visibly frail predecessor, Hu Jintao, being escorted out of . 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. Trailer for 'Plastic China' film by director Wang Jiuliang. 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. But Chinas contribution to the global plastic crisis does not end there. It was featured in numerous festivals outside China, and has won several awards. 0000017854 00000 n Eight to 14 million tons of plastic waste ends up in oceans every single year, causing great harm to marine life, from accidental ingestion and entanglement, to increasing the risk of invasive species, which can throw entire ecosystems off balance. 0000001781 00000 n But last year, China put the kibosh on . "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. By the container load, the cast-off plastic comes from Korea, Europe and the US. Almost certainly, a proportion will have come from the homes, or more specifically the recycling bins, of Australia. 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. But Peng has no money, and anyway, Yi-Jie has to take care of her younger siblings and contribute to the recycling work. Beijing seems to be neither "biding its time" nor rising peacefully. This means that people eating fish have also been consuming plastics. ", A mother and a grandmother take care of a child in Beijing on Jan. 1, 2016. A familiar margarine packet among the mountains of rubbish in a backyard recycling facility on China. B!$H BBAZ[:]nu+n:utvw=vvw9}#AaH"\mAnirF~'U44`~4w~gqci)kJ 0000003791 00000 n The family, who lives near the city of Kunming in Yunnan province, adopted what . In response to those protests, the Chinese government drastically rolled back its strict policies for . 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. Directors Jiu-liang Wang Genres Documentary Subtitles English [CC] 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. Lu says the harassment became so savage that elderly residents of Linyi became afraid to leave their homes out of fear they might be kidnapped. 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. 0000021210 00000 n "Women have it all figured out now they won't have more kids even when they're told to have more!" This alters the one-child policy that was introduced in 1978 to control the . 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. 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. 0000001315 00000 n 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. 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. Until there is a. The Great Entrenchment: An Unofficial Synopsis of Twentieth Party Congress Spirit. 0000003242 00000 n 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. 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. For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. Officials in her village were actively policing families under the one-child policy. hide caption. hide caption. Made in China publications are open access and always available as a free download. In the last two years, the issue of waste exports to China has attractedconsiderable mediaand public attention. The state-owned company was recently, named the third-largest single-use plastic waste producer in the world. He came to the throne in 1908 at two-years-old and ruled until February 1912, when he was forced to abdicate. 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. An old friend of hers, the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng, knows full well what she and tens of thousands of other women in Linyi city went through. 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. 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. Viewers learn that this has to do with her status as a migrant, her familys meagre earnings, and her fathers alcoholism. Parents were not penalized for having twins, at least not according to the letter of the law. 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 terror of such enforcement of birth limits was widespread in Linyi, even if residents were not themselves planning on giving birth. We figured out that the waste wasnt necessarily Chinese waste, so I started to research what was behind this huge mountain of waste and all the dumping, and the fires, and smog, Wang told Inverse, through a translator, at Sundance. 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. How China's plastic waste ban forced a global recycling reckoning. One ton of unsorted waste was sold to China for about $9. He asks Wang Kun, his boss and the owner of the recycling workshop the Pengs work in, for a raise. On average, only about. And according to an Associated Press investigation, it continues to impose stricter controls over births including forced sterilizations among ethnic minorities, like the Turkic Uyghurs. 0000001204 00000 n August 4, 2020 1:46pm. AFP via Getty Images The documentary is also a meditation on issues of gender inequality. 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 mother of one of these middle schoolers holds her son close. This change will not be easy, but it must be done. Even if I had to go to prison and endure beatings, in the end, these children were able to survive. Han Dynasty Emperor Xian of Han, the last emperor of Han dynasty died as a duke. The policy permeates through Chinese society in other, sometimes unexpected ways. Ten years after China's infant milk tragedy, parents still won't trust their babies to local formula . Dr. Steven Svehlak and Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Payman Simoni agree. 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. "The one-child policy was not the only thing that happened in China in the 1980s and 1990s," Gietel-Basten says. They take her elsewhere, to a place where she can picture a better life, andmost damning of allit looks like this could be abroad. How much waste does China produce? ! Wang recalled. 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. 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. Our current pattern of manufacture, consume, discard is creating a chain of exploitation; it exploits the workers making our products, it exploits us through merciless advertising; and it exploits millions of poverty-stricken laborers working for a pittance like Kun and Peng in Plastic China. "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. Bright-eyed children run between heaping piles of plastic, a worn-out worker spends his meager wages on alcohol, and a preteen girl gazes solemnly at Western product advertisements she picks out of the monstrous piles of trash around her home. Much of the Western worlds waste was once bound for China. Plastic pollution has long plagued China, along with severe air pollution. 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. 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. 03:15. He's the youngest of three children this mother had under China's one-child policy. Summaries. 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. The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children. Climate. Among contributing factors was Plastic China (suliao wangguo, 2016), a documentary directed by Wang Jiuliang. 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. However, the film is all too often reduced to its function as a tool for denouncing environmental dumping. The state-owned company was recently named the third-largest single-use plastic waste producer in the world, where in 2019, it reportedly churned out about 5.3 million tonnes of plastics. Indeed, they cut across borders and sectors of economic activity. 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. After recording only 213 deaths and about 13,000 cases of COVID-19 from January 2020 to early 2022, the city is swamped by the current Omicron wave, which began at the start of the year and has . 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. 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. "That requires buying them a car, an apartment. The doctors strangled or drowned those babies.". Second, this prevents us from understanding why the film was censored in China, when the denunciation of waste imports actually fits with the Chinese states increasingly restrictive policies on this issue since the 2010s. 0000023972 00000 n If Plastic Chinas message really boiled down to nothing more than a plea against waste imports and the pollution they cause, then the film would not be an obvious target for the Chinese censors. Wangs camera catches heartbreaking images of Jie, the preteen with a collapsing weight of responsibility on her young shoulders. Then in 2016, the state allowed two children. NPR isn't using her name to protect her identity because of the trauma she suffered. Editor's note: This story contains descriptions that may be disturbing. 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. Priscilla Presley before and after (Source: Radar Online) Experts reckon that the 77-year-old has likely had cheek and lip fillers, skin resurfacing treatments, and a face-lift. 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 . A further issue highlighted in the film is that of conspicuous consumption. By the time the reality show ended in 2007 after 52 episodes across four seasons it was tainted with low ratings and a lot of controversy. For some, the pain is still too much to bear. His mother watches him approvingly. "There was also rapid urbanization, economic growth, industrialization, female emancipation and more female labor force participation. . 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 China, the film went viral in January 2017 before quickly disappearing from the Internetthereby following a pattern that affects most of Wangs work (Zhao 2017). Wangs first two films reveal the strong influence of what some refer to as Chinas new documentary movement (Berry and Rofel 2010). He used a pickax to drive them off and was imprisoned for that for half a year. The target . 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. Despite censorship, Wang Jiuliang has managed to reach a wide audience with Plastic China, and have considerable impact. His mother watches him approvingly. 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. So the mother went into hiding to carry her son to term. Her son is part of the last generation of children in China whose births were ruled illegal at the time. 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.. But even there Johnson found numerous stories of families going to great lengths . In August 2014, the little girl was able to go to school and she is in third grade now. Instead of numbing us with facts like how China has contaminated over 80 per cent of its fresh water through landfills and processing, he gets us to feel bad for Kun, Peng and their kids; if we identified with their plight, perhaps we wouldnt want to send so much trash for them to sort through. of plastic inputs in oceans while putting China at 7%. For years, even social scientists have supported a widely held belief that Chinese . The film has been particularly closely associated with the issue of waste imports since July 2017, when the Chinese central government hit headlines domestically and internationally by announcing a ban on imports of 24 categories of waste, including many types of plastics (Voice of America 2018). 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. 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. 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. To compensate for this narrow focus, we need to look beyond the predominant reading. 0000439946 00000 n Children ride a toy train at a shopping mall in Beijing, on Oct. 30, 2015. 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. Single-use plastics are also made almost entirely from fossil fuels. https%3A%2F%2Fearth.org%2Fchina-plastic-pollution%2F. During that time, imperial China was replaced by the Republic of China. 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. 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 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? On Jan. 1, China enacted new legislation allowing all married couples to have two children. She builds forts inside the recyclables and rifles through Western magazines, piecing together clues about life beyond the garbage and enriching it with fantasies. 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. Director Jiu-liang Wang is one of the few documentary filmmakers in China to have taken on the government and won. 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. 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. "Officials would kidnap you if you tried to have two children. Products. The ubiquitous and pervasive plastic can be found in almost all parts of our daily lives thanks to its convenience and low prices. Mao's attempts to remove the family from the center of Chinese life ultimately failed, but not before destroying a few aspects of traditional culture. In 2017, China collected 215 million tonnes of urban household waste, according to the country's statistical yearbook. Twenty-something Kun is a hard worker with a dream of buying a new car to boost his social status. 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. 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.