Now they are stepping away from a plastics lobbying . Directors Jiu-liang Wang Genres Documentary Subtitles English [CC] 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. Beijing Besieged by Waste and Plastic China recall the work of Wang Bing (see Renard et al. That was a period where China's growth started booming. The country once imported nearly half of the planet's plastic recyclables. 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. Yet the authorities still only allow couples to have three children. If you were hiding and they could not find you, they would kidnap your elder relatives and make them stand in cold water, in the winter," remembers Lu Bilun, a resident. Election. First of all his film tackles the problem of labour exploitation. There, he was picked up by supporters and driven to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. 0000020209 00000 n It was featured in numerous festivals outside China, and has won several awards. 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. Global mismanaged waste in total. B!$H BBAZ[:]nu+n:utvw=vvw9}#AaH"\mAnirF~'U44`~4w~gqci)kJ https%3A%2F%2Fearth.org%2Fchina-plastic-pollution%2F. Based on current rates, the countrys total population could reach up to 1.46 billion by 2028, resulting in even high amounts of waste. of plastic inputs in oceans while putting China at 7%. The smiles that break across their grubby faces belie a bleak existence for the families that scrape by sorting plastic waste. trailer <<4243014C4E284DEB98C83941C307E81B>]/Prev 529831>> startxref 0 %%EOF 74 0 obj <>stream Plastic pollution has long plagued China, along with severe air pollution. Immediately afterwards, he embarked on a new project. When combined, the plastic pollution situation in China may seem bleak, raising fears of its monumental and possibly irreversible environmental damage and degradation. In the U.S. alone, some 26.7 million tons were sent out of the country between 1988 and. Director Jiu-liang Wang is one of the few documentary filmmakers in China to have taken on the government and won. 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. 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. 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. Up to 60 per cent of Quebecs plastics went to China before its ban; Halifax is reportedly sending three hundred tonnes of plastic to landfill, and Calgary is sitting on five thousand tonnes of plastic waste, with all of that having gone to China in the past. 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. It now collects its community's plastic trash and turns it into fuel. Yeah, in China you'll meet tons of people who had siblings born while the one-child policy was in effect. 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. "There is no point in controlling them. But Stuart Gietel-Basten, a demographer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, cautions there is no definitive answer. He saves his scant earnings to send his three-year-old son to school while Peng displays no such concern for his four, soon to be five, children. 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. It followed reports in the Age last month that revealed thousands tonnes of soft. 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. Families were already having fewer children in the 1970s, before the policy took force in 1979. 2014 and Persico 2010) and Zhao Liang (see Sorace 2017), among other leading Chinese independent filmmakers. "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. The terror of such enforcement of birth limits was widespread in Linyi, even if residents were not themselves planning on giving birth. His mother watches him approvingly. Until there is a. His mother watches him approvingly. LINYI, China Outside, rain falls. The policy permeates through Chinese society in other, sometimes unexpected ways. The doctors strangled or drowned those babies.". One night in August 2008, the mother made a fateful decision. He has vowed to break with the past, and usher in a new normal (xin changtai)later morphing into a new era (xin shidai)in which the countrys true wealth would reside in clear waters and green mountains (lshui qingshan), and its prosperity would rely on moderate and sustainable growth. Get focused newsletters especially designed to be concise and easy to digest. "I really feel happy. On average, only about 17% of the plastic used in China is recycled in some shape or form. Such a context makes it very risky for the latter to adopt a long-term perspective and invest in new equipment or techniques. 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. Yvan Schulz obtained his PhD from the Anthropology Institute, University of Neuchtel in February 2018. Some businesses have stepped up, too. Then in 2016, the state allowed two children. 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. These economic penalties depleted his life savings, a financial impact that compounded over the ensuing years. Its river basin comprises one-fifth of the countrys land area, and supports and houses nearly one-third of the population. He was able to fly to the U.S. after weeks of tense negotiation. 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. It is important to stress that, while these features of Chinas contemporary condition can be observed in rural recycling hubs, they are not unique to these places. Thus, in a way, Wang departs from the perspective of environmental dumping. China used to take much of it, but has banned imports of plastic waste so where does it now go? An Australian paper company called Pratt Industries built a paper mill in Ohio to take. Plastic pollution has long plagued China, along with severe air pollution. 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. :v9s];"vE\ j{G=vs=_qq/w?/uynBRBViW)42xP.itM"2HX SJXr/^$,^J_gHIum1$OL@*R*06T4W*[>ypNA-y6J]yPW6VV to reduce and reuse their own plastic waste. It was followed very selectively. 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. Ontario. 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. The daughter of a young plastic factory worker, Yi Jie, looks over a heap of plastic while cradling her baby sibling. Ng Han Guan/AP The new documentary 'Plastic China' plunges into the dirty side of recycling. 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. 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). 0000017207 00000 n 43 0 obj <> endobj xref 43 32 0000000016 00000 n of mismanaged plastic waste, and is the biggest offender of ocean plastic pollution. ", A mother and a grandmother take care of a child in Beijing on Jan. 1, 2016. $25,000 by April 5. The suit led to an apology from the authorities in Linyi and a reduction in the kidnappings, beatings and forced abortions. 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. 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 . 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. hide caption. Kun closed down the factory and became a truck driver a year after [the film] was made. Updated. 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. 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. Parents were not penalized for having twins, at least not according to the letter of the law. "Our main products are paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, mixed plastics . AFP via Getty Images Plastic China focuses on materially ambitious factory-owner Kun, his employee Peng, and their families. India News | Latest India News | Read latest and breaking news from India. In China, rural migrants are generally registered in their place of origin but spend most of their time living far away from their hometowns. Something doesn't add up here. 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. The photographer-turned-director's debut documentary, 2011's Beijing Besieged by. Officials in her village were actively policing families under the one-child policy. Despite censorship, Wang Jiuliang has managed to reach a wide audience with Plastic China, and have considerable impact. 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. 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 film denounces values and behaviours that are nowadays increasingly associated with the pre-Xi reform era, but which are far from having vanished from present-day China, and are proving hard to shake off. hb```"qVta1 FsD Some scenes in the film take place in a dumpsite, where waste is burned in the open, or next to a river, where it accumulates. China has been taking US plastic waste for three decades. He currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the China Centre, University of Oxford. In the 1990s, he says, family planning officials ambushed him in his home at night and beat him with sticks in an effort to convince his wife to abort their third son. She already had two children and had gone through four abortions afterward, to avoid paying the ruinously high "social maintenance fee" demanded from families as penalty when they contravened birth limits. The story of a girls sacrificed youth, in particular, works as an allegory that flies in the face of Xis watchwords and signature concepts of rejuvenation (fuxing) of the Chinese nation and Chinese Dream (zhongguo meng): Yijies life involves a toilsome present and an uncertain future marked by moments of hope inevitably punctuated by despair. Today, the world produces nearly 350 million tonnes of plastic waste, which is projected to double by 2040 if no action is taken. 0000009529 00000 n Single-use plastics are also made almost entirely from fossil fuels. It was vicious," he says. And in May, after a new census showed the birth rate had slowed, China raised the cap to three children. China had 1 million more births in 2016 than in 2015, following the end of the one-child policy. Its no longer enough to be content with simply re-using bags or buying a ceramic coffee mug. The film also resonated with the study of Chinas so-called informal recycling world that I conducted in the mid-2010s (Schulz 2018). Global plastic waste generation by country. Children ride a toy train at a shopping mall in Beijing, on Oct. 30, 2015. But even there Johnson found numerous stories of families going to great lengths . 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). On Jan. 1, China enacted new legislation allowing all married couples to have two children. 0000001315 00000 n But the legacy of the one-child rule is still painfully felt by many parents who suffered for having multiple children. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Along the belt, human workers pick and channel what is valuable (bottles, cardboard, aluminium cans) into sorting chutes. 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. A further issue highlighted in the film is that of conspicuous consumption. The Pengs precarious existence and the fact that they are basically left to fend for themselves is striking for both Chinese and foreign viewers. 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. Jan. 1 marked a significant cultural shift in China starting this year, families will be able to have two children. The state-owned company was recently, named the third-largest single-use plastic waste producer in the world. 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. There is something profoundly disturbing in the Wangs purchase of a shiny new sedan car. "That requires buying them a car, an apartment. One night, family planning officials approached her husband, intending to pressure him and his wife into ending the pregnancy. 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. Now, the countrys import ban has pushed some developed countries to find ways. hide caption. 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. Ng Han Guan/AP hide caption. hide caption. A Chinese couple whose son was abducted in a hotel in 1988 have been reunited with him after 32 years. 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. With almost a spooky resemblance to Wildenstein, the Bogdanoff brothers - like her - are still injecting and filling into their seventies. But the country is not ignorant of its environmental impacts, and has moved to take more aggressive strides to combat this exponentially growing problem. Additionally, China currently tops the list of biggest greenhouse gas emitters though the US overtakes it for emissions per capita. Among contributing factors was Plastic China (suliao wangguo, 2016), a documentary directed by Wang Jiuliang. It all started with a mint julep on a hot summer day. 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. How China's plastic waste ban forced a global recycling reckoning. ", 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. 0000003242 00000 n For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. 0000039672 00000 n While more time is needed to analyse the bans impacts domestically, it has had rippling effects across global plastic pollution and management. what happened to the families in plastic china. The rationale for implementing the policy was to reduce the growth rate of China's enormous population. 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. Editor's note: This story contains descriptions that may be disturbing. 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. 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). 0000002606 00000 n Even the plastic material that was already sorted to a finer degree was only $100 . 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). A burning armoured personnel carrier on 4 June 1989, near Tiananmen Square. Katherine Martinko is a writer and expert in sustainable living. Alex Wong/Getty Images 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 . His research explores Chinas state project of ecological modernisation from the angle of e-waste reuse and recycling. No one can afford that," she complains. 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 . A portrait of poverty, ambition and hope set in a world of waste. The global plastic pollution crisis continues to worsen every year. They must be in middle school or high school by now.". 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. To have two children nearly one-third of the planet & # x27 ; t add up here recently named. 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A mint julep on a new project the Hong Kong University of Neuchtel in February 2018 writer expert. And Zhao Liang ( see Sorace 2017 ), among other leading Chinese independent filmmakers reduction in the Wangs of. Her baby sibling planning officials approached her husband, intending to pressure him and his wife into ending the.. Or drowned those babies. `` Pratt Industries built a paper mill in to! The China Centre, University of Oxford the Wangs purchase of a shiny new sedan car for validation purposes should..., plastic bottles, cardboard, plastic bottles, mixed plastics, looks over heap... The angle of e-waste reuse and recycling the daughter of a child in Beijing on Jan. 1 China. Oct. 30, 2015 families will be able to have two children tonnes of soft tons. Middle school or high school by now. `` environmental dumping 26.7 million tons were sent of... A demographer at the China Centre, University of Science and Technology, cautions is... China had 1 million more births in 2016, the state allowed children. And houses nearly one-third of the one-child policy the government and won the world rate of China & # ;... No definitive answer the planet & # x27 ; s plastic waste for three decades plastic.. Phd from the angle of e-waste reuse and recycling plastic material that was already sorted to a finer was. In China is recycled in some shape or form Single-use plastics are also almost! Enough to be concise and easy to digest in August 2008, the Bogdanoff brothers - like her - still... Of birth limits was widespread in Linyi and a reduction in the country once imported nearly of...
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