03:15. 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. 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. "If you carry it with you all the time, it gets too tiring.". This is on top of the fact that Chinas population is growing by 0.5% on average annually. As a result of ocean plastic pollution, where plastics slowly break down into smaller debris and particles called microplastics. The problem The bike-sharing craze in China five years ago sucked in billions of dollars of investors' cash and clients' deposits that start-ups spent on millions of new bikes in an effort to grab market share. 0000439869 00000 n There is something profoundly disturbing in the Wangs purchase of a shiny new sedan car. Fish makes up the majority of diets for many people in China. Wangs camera catches heartbreaking images of Jie, the preteen with a collapsing weight of responsibility on her young shoulders. hb```"qVta1 FsD Its river basin comprises one-fifth of the countrys land area, and supports and houses nearly one-third of the population. 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. Immediately afterwards, he embarked on a new project. In response to those protests, the Chinese government drastically rolled back its strict policies for . "People act in funny ways," she says. Plastic films, plastic bags, the plastic wrapping that comes around a lot of packaged goods, that all goes into the garbage. This doesn't bode well for our plastic waste problem. 0000016680 00000 n Plastic China focuses on materially ambitious factory-owner Kun, his employee Peng, and their families. 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. 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. 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. China is also by far the. 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. Director Jiu-liang Wang is one of the few documentary filmmakers in China to have taken on the government and won. But even there Johnson found numerous stories of families going to great lengths . 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. Yeah, in China you'll meet tons of people who had siblings born while the one-child policy was in effect. 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. 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. 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. 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. Plastic China focuses on materially ambitious factory-owner Kun, his employee Peng, and . "It has been so many years, and I have let the pain go," the mother of three says, eyes downcast. "Our main products are paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, mixed plastics . The British colony simply. This film debuted two years ago, but its relevance is striking in the wake of Chinas sudden refusal to continue importing foreign waste. For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. ! Wang recalled. For some, the pain is still too much to bear. The ubiquitous and pervasive plastic can be found in almost all parts of our daily lives thanks to its convenience and low prices. He's the youngest of three children this mother had under China's. Fred Dufour/AFP via Getty Images Another monumental step China has taken to combat plastic pollution is its ban on recycling plastic imports in 2018. China had 1 million more births in 2016 than in 2015, following the end of the one-child policy. When his wife became pregnant again, he hoped for a son,. 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). 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. By the container load, the cast-off plastic comes from Korea, Europe and the US. She builds forts inside the recyclables and rifles through Western magazines, piecing together clues about life beyond the garbage and enriching it with fantasies. "The one-child policy was not the only thing that happened in China in the 1980s and 1990s," Gietel-Basten says. 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. 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. To compare, Europe produces about 19% of global plastics while North America is responsible for 18%. Its no longer enough to be content with simply re-using bags or buying a ceramic coffee mug. Ng Han Guan/AP For years, even social scientists have supported a widely held belief that Chinese . 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. The Pengs precarious existence and the fact that they are basically left to fend for themselves is striking for both Chinese and foreign viewers. discovered that all 21 species of sea fish and freshwater fish from Chinese waters that were examined have ingested plastic. All the issues mentioned above are central to Wangs narrative in Plastic China. "I thought this is it if I do not have this child, my body will not be able to have any more.". The family, who lives near the city of Kunming in Yunnan province, adopted what . The insane volume of sorted scraps are pushed through a machine that turns the plastic into a gross, grey sludge before it is transformed into small grey pellets. 0000010492 00000 n 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. A portrait of poverty, ambition and hope set in a world of waste. The daughter of a young plastic factory worker, Yi Jie, looks over a heap of plastic while cradling her baby sibling. State media celebrated the news. 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. Plastic China: Directed by Jiuliang Wang. trailer <<4243014C4E284DEB98C83941C307E81B>]/Prev 529831>> startxref 0 %%EOF 74 0 obj <>stream In the U.S. alone, some 26.7 million tons were sent out of the country between 1988 and. 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). Yet, 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. The . 0000017854 00000 n What was she hiding from? Her son is part of the last generation of children in China whose births were ruled illegal at the time. of plastic inputs in oceans while putting China at 7%. of mismanaged plastic waste, and is the biggest offender of ocean plastic pollution. The . 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. 0000039672 00000 n 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 Qing . Much like The Swan, a show that ran concurrently . Dr. Anthony Youn believes there are clear signs of a face-lift on Priscilla's face. ", 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. Then in 2016, the state allowed two children. ", A mother and a grandmother take care of a child in Beijing on Jan. 1, 2016. $25,000 by April 5. 0000022087 00000 n This is obvious in, among others, his choice of topic (Chinas economic growth and opening to the world as experienced by the countrys underclass), his relationships with subjects (long-term involvement, much like that of an anthropologist), and his cinematographic style (observational realism involving on-the-spot and spontaneous shooting, a director who stands behind the camera, and the absence of voiceover). After six months of getting to know two families who worked at one small plant, Wang was allowed intimate access to their lives. 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. 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. Director Jiu-liang Wang is one of the few documentary filmmakers in China to have taken on the government and won. There are over 5,000 little unregulated recycling plants in the town alone, giving Wang plenty of subject options. 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. WUHAN, China Zhang Hai has a warning to World Health Organization-led scientists researching the origin of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China: Don't be fooled. Plastic pollution has long plagued China, along with severe air pollution. Midway through its annual session, China's ceremonial parliament is focusing on boosting the economy, building self-reliance in technology and further squeezing room for political opposition in Hong Kong. But Chinas contribution to the global plastic crisis does not end there. The doctors strangled or drowned those babies.". 0000003355 00000 n 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. Fish makes up the majority of diets for many people in China. 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. 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 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. of the plastic used in China is recycled in some shape or form. 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. hide caption. 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. 04:22. "Despite all the overwhelming demographic evidence, they're saying, 'We need to control you,'" says the author, Fong. The terror of such enforcement of birth limits was widespread in Linyi, even if residents were not themselves planning on giving birth. 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. 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. Ontario. Yvan Schulz obtained his PhD from the Anthropology Institute, University of Neuchtel in February 2018. 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. The film also resonated with the study of Chinas so-called informal recycling world that I conducted in the mid-2010s (Schulz 2018). To the US and other developed countries, that's a lot less trouble to export waste to China. Single-use plastics are also made almost entirely from fossil fuels. B!$H BBAZ[:]nu+n:utvw=vvw9}#AaH"\mAnirF~'U44`~4w~gqci)kJ In the last two years, the issue of waste exports to China has attractedconsiderable mediaand public attention. 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. Ng Han Guan/AP 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. A further issue highlighted in the film is that of conspicuous consumption. The news hit hard in the United States, which is home to about 60,000 children adopted from China, mostly girls. 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. A burning armoured personnel carrier on 4 June 1989, near Tiananmen Square. 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. "Other doctors would artificially induce labor. She is especially protective of him. 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 India News | Latest India News | Read latest and breaking news from India. The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children. 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. 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. 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. 0000009053 00000 n His mother watches him approvingly. 0000009529 00000 n The success of the first film got Wang invited to California, where he toured recycling plants as part of his next round of research. And I was carrying a camera, so it was especially tough at the beginning. The rationale for implementing the policy was to reduce the growth rate of China's enormous population. 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. 43 0 obj <> endobj xref 43 32 0000000016 00000 n 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. The rest was buried in landfills or simply dumped and left to wash into rivers and . "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. But Kunwho is Han, from Shandong province, and can read and writerefuses, telling Wenyuan that he can always leave if he is not satisfied. 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). 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. 0000023972 00000 n As one example, importing one ton of recycled waste, the customs tariff is $2000 RMB which is about $300 USD. 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. A recent book helps explain how PRC leaders think about the . ". what happened to the families in plastic china. the mother laughs helplessly. "There is no point in controlling them. The law was designed to fight the "White Pollution" caused by plastic packaging, and authorities hoped that a small monetary charge would motivate customers to bring their own reusable . 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 mostly a monotonous existence, consisting largely of wading through imported plastic and trash, and melting it in small industrial vats. In this sense, Plastic China has arguably played a key role in the recent evolution of the trade in recyclable waste. 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. Additionally, China currently tops the list of biggest greenhouse gas emitters though the US overtakes it for emissions per capita. Chinese parents, who have children born outside the country's one-child policy, protest outside the family planning commission in an attempt to have their fines canceled in Beijing, on Jan. 5, 2016. It was vicious," he says. But the legacy of the one-child rule is still painfully felt by many parents who suffered for having multiple children. 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. 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 . Even the plastic material that was already sorted to a finer degree was only $100 . 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. "These effects will be felt in the generation ahead. She is especially protective of him. 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. There are clear signs that this space is shrinking nowadays, yet this does not stop many independent filmmakers from pursuing their mission (Berry 2017). Mao Yin was snatched aged two, while his father stopped to get him some water on the way home. Her dreams are daydreams, a way for her to escape the harsh reality she experiences on a daily basis. 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. 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. INVERSE 2023 BDG Media, Inc. All rights reserved. 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