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). 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. She is especially protective of him. 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. Almost certainly, a proportion will have come from the homes, or more specifically the recycling bins, of Australia. 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. Yi-Jie, who lives in a spare room at the plant with her parents and siblings, spends her days working and constructing imaginary worlds atop the piles of trash that cover the ground. Landfills stretch out endlessly, enormous hills of colourful plastic bottles loom in the distance, and what we can only presume to be toxic water run-off from the factory is what Jie uses to wet her hair before she brushes it. 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. The seventh child, a boy, Liu Zhuang drowned at the age of five, and his mother says she cries every. "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. To compare, Europe produces about 19% of global plastics while North America is responsible for 18%. 0000024672 00000 n 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 plan also seeks to promote plastic alternatives such as bamboo, wood and paper (and scientific research into biodegradable plastics) over the next five years, as well as clearing plastic waste from key lakes and rivers, tourist attractions and rural areas. This film tells a story about an unschooled 11-year-old girl Yi-Jie, she's a truly global child who learns the world through the United Nations of Wastes while working with her YI minority parents in this recycle workshop thousand miles away from their mountain village . 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. Wangs camera catches heartbreaking images of Jie, the preteen with a collapsing weight of responsibility on her young shoulders. 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. "It has been so many years, and I have let the pain go," the mother of three says, eyes downcast. 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 . One ton of unsorted waste was sold to China for about $9. $2599 ($0.87/Count) Save more with Subscribe & Save. "Our main products are paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, mixed plastics . 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). Children ride a toy train at a shopping mall in Beijing, on Oct. 30, 2015. "There is no use in trying to make sense of society. 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. 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. Today, he lives in Maryland with his family. The daughter of a young plastic factory worker, Yi Jie, looks over a heap of plastic while cradling her baby sibling. Through my interviews with self-made entrepreneurs who live in the countryside or have rural origins, I came to the conclusion that, as a rule, these people did not enjoy any support from state authorities for changing their methods or upgrading their facilities in order to cause less pollution, and better protect workers. As a result of ocean plastic pollution, where plastics slowly break down into smaller debris and particles called microplastics, one study discovered that all 21 species of sea fish and freshwater fish from Chinese waters that were examined have ingested plastic. Chen, the lawyer, mounted a class action lawsuit on behalf of Linyi's women. The documentary is also a meditation on issues of gender inequality. On average, only about 17% of the plastic used in China is recycled in some shape or form. In conclusion, Plastic China constitutes a broad reflexion on social problems and dilemmas in the post-socialist era. Plastic China (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ) is a 2016 Chinese documentary film depicting the lives of two families who make their living recycling plastic waste imported from developed countries. 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. 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. 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 . In the film, the main character, a bright girl named Peng Yijie, does not attend school, although she is already 11 years old. 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. 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. The success of the first film got Wang invited to California, where he toured recycling plants as part of his next round of research. Much like The Swan, a show that ran concurrently . All together, these measures are aligned with the countrys 2060 carbon neutrality targets. 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 . 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. the mother laughs helplessly. But even there Johnson found numerous stories of families going to great lengths . Her dreams are daydreams, a way for her to escape the harsh reality she experiences on a daily basis. The new documentary 'Plastic China' plunges into the dirty side of recycling. The global plastic pollution crisis continues to worsen every year. 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. She carried her son to term while hiding in a relative's house. The smiles that break across their grubby faces belie a bleak existence for the families that scrape by sorting plastic waste. August 4, 2020 1:46pm. hide caption. The people who had a stake in it did not welcome the shooting.. 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. He and his wife persevered and had three sons. He came to the throne in 1908 at two-years-old and ruled until February 1912, when he was forced to abdicate. That's pushing policymakers to consider raising the official retirement age currently 60 for men and 55 for women for the first time in 40 years. Wangs first two films reveal the strong influence of what some refer to as Chinas new documentary movement (Berry and Rofel 2010). Much of the Western worlds waste was once bound for China. of the plastic used in China is recycled in some shape or form. Andy Wong/AP It has been ten months since China closed its doors to the world's recycling waste. Initially Feng. However, it is also strongly implied that Yijies gender played a role in her parents decision to neglect her education. 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. It is therefore not surprising that Plastic China is generally invoked, both within and outside of China, in connection with the global capitalist system that, for many years at least, allowed relatively rich countries to pass the burden of pollution on to China. 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. There are clear signs that this space is shrinking nowadays, yet this does not stop many independent filmmakers from pursuing their mission (Berry 2017). 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. Kate Sheehy. Her body was giving her all the telltale signs that she was pregnant again. The weeklong meeting of the National People's Congress, which rubber stamps policies approved by the Communist Party leadership, provides a window into government priorities. 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. In connection with this, the film represents a reflection on the legal status and living conditions of Chinas floating population (liudong renkou). 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. The rest was buried in landfills or simply dumped and left to wash into rivers and . The suit led to an apology from the authorities in Linyi and a reduction in the kidnappings, beatings and forced abortions. This targeted Boosting helps us to reach wider audiences aiming to convince the unconvinced, to inform the uninformed, to enlighten the dogmatic. 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. Among contributing factors was Plastic China (suliao wangguo, 2016), a documentary directed by Wang Jiuliang. {&L Q4t)o('aJ. She babysits, cooks, works and teaches her three younger siblings while her parents do the same back-breaking work day in and day out. Its river basin comprises one-fifth of the countrys land area, and supports and houses nearly one-third of the population. hide caption. The whenever is ambiguous, as his 11-year-old daughter Yi Jie tells the camera that hes been promising to send her to school since she was five. 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). The U.S. used to send a lot of its plastic waste to China to get recycled. trailer <<4243014C4E284DEB98C83941C307E81B>]/Prev 529831>> startxref 0 %%EOF 74 0 obj <>stream . Despite censorship, Wang Jiuliang has managed to reach a wide audience with Plastic China, and have considerable impact. She demurs, her voice growing quiet. 0000023972 00000 n Made in China publications are open access and always available as a free download. There, he was picked up by supporters and driven to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Global mismanaged waste in total. To compensate for this narrow focus, we need to look beyond the predominant reading. hide caption. 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. "People act in funny ways," she says. 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. This is on top of the fact that Chinas population is growing by 0.5% on average annually. They must be in middle school or high school by now.". The prosperity of Chinas coastal regions relies on a massive inflow of migrant workers from the interior, who rarely have much bargaining power regarding their working conditions. Election. 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. 0000009053 00000 n "Other doctors would artificially induce labor. 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. 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. 0000039672 00000 n It was featured in numerous festivals outside China, and has won several awards. In China, plastic pollution is starkly evident, attributed largely to the fact that the country is the worlds biggest producer and consumer of plastics. "There was also rapid urbanization, economic growth, industrialization, female emancipation and more female labor force participation. Director Jiu-liang Wang is one of the few documentary filmmakers in China to have taken on the government and won. Even before China's ban, only 9 percent of discarded plastic was being recycled, while 12 percent was burned. one of the fairly recent ancesto. Enforcement of the policy had begun to loosen by the early 2000s, as horrific stories of forced abortions and botched sterilizations caused policymakers to rethink the rule. 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. 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. 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. ", A man and a child are reflected on a glass panel displaying a tiger at the Museum of Natural History in Beijing, Dec. 2, 2016. In this sense, Plastic China has arguably played a key role in the recent evolution of the trade in recyclable waste. This change will not be easy, but it must be done. Plastic China focuses on materially ambitious factory-owner Kun, his employee Peng, and their families. 0000001943 00000 n While more time is needed to analyse the bans impacts domestically, it has had rippling effects across global plastic pollution and management. 2a cmAAASDMn,!T+FrHV`)sbg:\8B@}Np(D3uOGh1.\8}) n"%UtZ-)9Kn>{b^xFrn{g(dX J1( O. 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. If we do nothing and continue to turn our beautiful world into a Wall-E-esque nightmare, then the fate of our civilization will be suicide by garbage. Hand-picked stories once a fortnight. 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. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, two major sellers of plastic bottles, have made sweeping sustainability commitments. 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. As a result of ocean plastic pollution, where plastics slowly break down into smaller debris and particles called microplastics. Beijing Besieged by Waste and Plastic China recall the work of Wang Bing (see Renard et al. https%3A%2F%2Fearth.org%2Fchina-plastic-pollution%2F. 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. November 15, 2022. 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. 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? Because many prioritized having a son over a daughter, orphanages experienced a surge in baby girls who were abandoned or put up for adoption. 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. China boosts electric car fleet for public transport, Support award-winning independent journalism with The Yangtze river, the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world, is an important water body in China. The U.S., Japan and Germany are all at the top of the list when it comes to exporting their used plastic. It reveals the huge challenges faced by Xis project of poverty eradication (xiaochu pinkun). But Peng has no money, and anyway, Yi-Jie has to take care of her younger siblings and contribute to the recycling work. How China's plastic waste ban forced a global recycling reckoning. How much waste does China produce? 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. The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children. He asks Wang Kun, his boss and the owner of the recycling workshop the Pengs work in, for a raise. Married couples in China in 2016, were allowed to have two children, after concerns over an aging population and shrinking workforce ushered in an end to the country's controversial one-child policy. %PDF-1.4 % This means that people eating fish have also been consuming plastics. His descendants inherited his d. 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. of plastic inputs in oceans while putting China at 7%. The target . And so, ironically, now that people are allowed to have more children, they are increasingly reluctant to, because of the high cost of child care and education. 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 . $25,000 by April 5. In the film, Peng Wenyuanwho comes from Sichuan province, belongs to the Yi ethnic group, and is almost illiteratecomplains repeatedly about his salary. # x27 ; s plastic waste to China to get recycled unsorted waste was once bound for.! For a raise numerous stories of families going to great lengths poverty eradication ( xiaochu pinkun.... China has arguably played a role in her parents decision to neglect her education a global reckoning..., Europe produces about 19 % of the recycling work 0 % % EOF 74 obj! Used in China is recycled in some shape or form a boy, Liu drowned... The list when it comes to exporting their used plastic no money, and anyway, Yi-Jie to. 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