what happened to the families in plastic china

How much waste does China produce? The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children. Fred Dufour/AFP via Getty Images 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 . Initially Feng. All the issues mentioned above are central to Wangs narrative in Plastic China. Plastic China focuses on materially ambitious factory-owner Kun, his employee Peng, and their families. $25,000 by April 5. Trailer for 'Plastic China' film by director Wang Jiuliang. Work done by environmentalists Chen Liwen and Mao Da from China Zero Waste Alliance (ling feiqi lianmeng) suggests that waste management is either lacking or highly inefficient in the Chinese countryside as a whole, and that much remains to be done in this field (Chitwood 2018). 0000017854 00000 n Today's top India news headlines, news on Indian politics, elections, government, business, technology, and Bollywood. But some babies were alive when they were born and began crying. 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. Director Jiu-liang Wang is one of the few documentary filmmakers in China to have taken on the government and won. She is especially protective of him. One ton of unsorted waste was sold to China for about $9. 0000000936 00000 n Boost this article 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. 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. 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). She is especially protective of him. 0000439869 00000 n Editor's note: This story contains descriptions that may be disturbing. China implemented the policy of limiting each family to one child in 1979 to slow the growth of the country's population. But Chinas contribution to the global plastic crisis does not end there. 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. She demurs, her voice growing quiet. In one interview about the film, Wang stated that: China is a country that is facelifted, concealed, faked and unnatural. Summaries. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. One first reason why Plastic China should be considered as a comprehensive reflection on the contemporary condition in China is that this is consistent with the directors intention. 0000035823 00000 n 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. The photographer-turned-director's debut documentary, 2011's Beijing Besieged by. The British colony simply. Director Jiu-Liang Wang refers to PLASTIC CHINA as a title which riffs on the idea of plastic surgerya way of masking the underlying physical truth of any given situation. But even there Johnson found numerous stories of families going to great lengths . Environmental News, Data Analysis, Research & Policy Solutions. 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. How China's plastic waste ban forced a global recycling reckoning. Since taking office as president, Xi Jinping has striven to distinguish his government from the previous one. Despite censorship, Wang Jiuliang has managed to reach a wide audience with Plastic China, and have considerable impact. 0000001315 00000 n A Chinese couple whose son was abducted in a hotel in 1988 have been reunited with him after 32 years. You might also like: Chinas Refusal to Take Back Food Containers Exposes Hong Kongs Broken Plastic Waste Management System. She builds forts inside the recyclables and rifles through Western magazines, piecing together clues about life beyond the garbage and enriching it with fantasies. However, the films relevance extends far beyond the issue of waste management. Ng Han Guan/AP She carried her son to term while hiding in a relative's house. And so he set off to the rural region where he encountered a lot of resistance from those involved in the remedial waste management industry. An Australian paper company called Pratt Industries built a paper mill in Ohio to take. An important implication is that improving the lives of the people who live in rural recycling hubs and engage in waste sorting and processing requires more than putting an end to waste importsespecially if imports are substituted with domestic waste, of which there is no shortage in China. Katherine Martinko is a writer and expert in sustainable living. 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. "All we can do is go on living," she says. 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. 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. 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. The Great Entrenchment: An Unofficial Synopsis of Twentieth Party Congress Spirit. hide caption. He currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the China Centre, University of Oxford. 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. Global plastic waste generation by country. Answer (1 of 7): Hi, from the grandchild of 3 families that would probably be considered bourgeois before 49 Family 1: Paternal Grandfather family, granted this was a quirky case as he was the son of a landlord (the most dominant family in that village for sure. During the reform era, this has prevented them from enjoying key rights and public services in their place of residence. Now they are stepping away from a plastics lobbying . 0000003466 00000 n "Other doctors would artificially induce labor. Now the world is scrambling to adjust. 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. Image from 'Plastic China' documentary website. 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. The Pengs precarious existence and the fact that they are basically left to fend for themselves is striking for both Chinese and foreign viewers. He frightens viewers with images of the relentless plastic flowing through the small factory, preying on our ability to empathize with these poverty-stricken laborers. Andy Wong/AP The policy permeates through Chinese society in other, sometimes unexpected ways. Her dreams are daydreams, a way for her to escape the harsh reality she experiences on a daily basis. Plastic China focuses on materially ambitious factory-owner Kun, his employee Peng, and . They must be in middle school or high school by now.". For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. Thus, in a way, Wang departs from the perspective of environmental dumping. 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. HdU{PSW? 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. "These effects will be felt in the generation ahead. The . 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). 2014 and Persico 2010) and Zhao Liang (see Sorace 2017), among other leading Chinese independent filmmakers. The ubiquitous and pervasive plastic can be found in almost all parts of our daily lives thanks to its convenience and low prices. This is on top of the fact that Chinas population is growing by 0.5% on average annually. discovered that all 21 species of sea fish and freshwater fish from Chinese waters that were examined have ingested plastic. Updated. 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. 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. The seventh child, a boy, Liu Zhuang drowned at the age of five, and his mother says she cries every. New York CNN Business . 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. Much of the Western worlds waste was once bound for China. 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. When the ancestral temples were destroyed most families lost the records of their extended family. , 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. 0000001204 00000 n Global mismanaged waste in total. Much of the Western worlds waste was once bound for China. NPR isn't using her name to protect her identity because of the trauma she suffered. It's margarine tubs, clamshells, deli containers. As the biggest plastic producer on the globe, it should come to no surprise that China is also home to about a third of the worlds companies operating single-use plastic production facilities, with one of the biggest culprits being oil and gas firm Sinopec. Her body was giving her all the telltale signs that she was pregnant again. 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. 0000010125 00000 n 0000035786 00000 n 0000009529 00000 n Single-use plastics are also made almost entirely from fossil fuels. In China, rural migrants are generally registered in their place of origin but spend most of their time living far away from their hometowns. Families were already having fewer children in the 1970s, before the policy took force in 1979. Its actually incredible that the film, which calls into question the Chinese governments devotion to environmentalism and the welfare of its people, actually made it out of the country. 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. 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 . Not only does the country consume at least one fifth of the worlds plastics, 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. 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 . Yet, something in Plastic China must have bothered Chinese censors, and prompted them to intervene. Inside, a middle-school student completes his homework. "There is no point in controlling them. 0000003242 00000 n The ubiquitous and pervasive plastic can be found in almost all parts of our daily lives thanks to its convenience and low prices. You might also like: Solution for Plastic Pollution: 6 Policies and Innovations Tackling Plastics, Featured image by: Sheila/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). 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. The rationale for implementing the policy was to reduce the growth rate of China's enormous population. 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. of the plastic used in China is recycled in some shape or form. This alters the one-child policy that was introduced in 1978 to control the . Image by: Our World in Data. the mother laughs helplessly. 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). 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. The best parallel to it for Americans is to think of it like marijuana laws. Her son is part of the last generation of children in China whose births were ruled illegal at the time. The country once imported nearly half of the planet's plastic recyclables. B!$H BBAZ[:]nu+n:utvw=vvw9}#AaH"\mAnirF~'U44`~4w~gqci)kJ ". 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. "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. 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. Plastic films, plastic bags, the plastic wrapping that comes around a lot of packaged goods, that all goes into the garbage. A burning armoured personnel carrier on 4 June 1989, near Tiananmen Square. 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. This targeted Boosting helps us to reach wider audiences aiming to convince the unconvinced, to inform the uninformed, to enlighten the dogmatic. This doesn't bode well for our plastic waste problem. 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. Based on current rates, the countrys total population could reach up to 1.46 billion by 2028, resulting in even high amounts of waste. 0000021210 00000 n 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. 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. 9 U4W6}-+c\y^xu^`88^iY :\`PrAiSvF5f19/L2Jh206X 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. But starting in 2005, the authorities began enforcing the policy with a renewed ferocity in Linyi. After six months of getting to know two families who worked at one small plant, Wang was allowed intimate access to their lives. Its river basin comprises one-fifth of the countrys land area, and supports and houses nearly one-third of the population. Municipalities across Canada are struggling under the weight of the rapidly accumulating plastics with no plan in place to deal with them, and it will continue to worsen if we keep living the way we have been. The film also resonated with the study of Chinas so-called informal recycling world that I conducted in the mid-2010s (Schulz 2018). Almost certainly, a proportion will have come from the homes, or more specifically the recycling bins, of Australia. In June 2020, directed remotely by their parents in Italy and a cousin in Canada, the four siblings - then aged between 11 and 16 - traveled from their remote village in Xinjiang all the way to. A recent book helps explain how PRC leaders think about the . 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. 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. When combined, the plastic pollution situation in China may seem bleak, raising fears of its monumental and possibly irreversible environmental damage and degradation. The rest was buried in landfills or simply dumped and left to wash into rivers and . Another factor that justifies adopting a broad interpretation of Plastic China is the wide range of social issues addressed by Wang. 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. 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. 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. The family, who lives near the city of Kunming in Yunnan province, adopted what . It was featured in numerous festivals outside China, and has won several awards. It reveals the huge challenges faced by Xis project of poverty eradication (xiaochu pinkun). Get focused newsletters especially designed to be concise and easy to digest. 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 . hide caption. 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. For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. China had 1 million more births in 2016 than in 2015, following the end of the one-child policy. 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). Lu says he paid a 4,000 yuan fine to have his second son in 2006 (about $500 at the time), after hiding his wife for months. hide caption. "This was not your average level of policy enforcement. One night in August 2008, the mother made a fateful decision. Her worries these days are more mundane. China has been taking US plastic waste for three decades. It was featured in numerous festivals outside China, and has won several awards. "Despite all the overwhelming demographic evidence, they're saying, 'We need to control you,'" says the author, Fong. Hand-picked stories once a fortnight. hide caption. She babysits, cooks, works and teaches her three younger siblings while her parents do the same back-breaking work day in and day out. Along the belt, human workers pick and channel what is valuable (bottles, cardboard, aluminium cans) into sorting chutes. Plastic pollution has long plagued China, along with severe air pollution. No full, official . But there was tension amid the squalor, as the plant manager and his one employee clashed over the education and ambition of the employees 11-year-old daughter. The LEGO Foundation is awarding a total of DKK 900 million (approximately US$ 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. Since 2014, Chinas household registration system (hukou) is being eased with a view to, among other things, give migrants better access to healthcare and education. 0000016680 00000 n There are over 5,000 little unregulated recycling plants in the town alone, giving Wang plenty of subject options. The doctors strangled or drowned those babies.". "If you carry it with you all the time, it gets too tiring.". 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). In the film, Peng Wenyuanwho comes from Sichuan province, belongs to the Yi ethnic group, and is almost illiteratecomplains repeatedly about his salary. At that point, it was already the world's most populous country. Wang turned his focus to imported plastic, and after some digging, learned that it was being brought to a little town in the province of Shandong, along the coast. 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. 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. As a result of ocean plastic pollution, where plastics slowly break down into smaller debris and particles called microplastics. of plastic inputs in oceans while putting China at 7%. 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). Among contributing factors was Plastic China (suliao wangguo, 2016), a documentary directed by Wang Jiuliang. Today, he lives in Maryland with his family. Viewers learn that this has to do with her status as a migrant, her familys meagre earnings, and her fathers alcoholism. But the country is not ignorant of its environmental impacts, and has moved to take more aggressive strides to combat this exponentially growing problem. It followed reports in the Age last month that revealed thousands tonnes of soft. 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. 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. Twenty-something Kun is a hard worker with a dream of buying a new car to boost his social status. In the last two years, the issue of waste exports to China has attractedconsiderable mediaand public attention. 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. 0000001806 00000 n Posted in Article, Work of Arts. 0000018669 00000 n Fish makes up the majority of diets for many people in China. 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. 0000010492 00000 n Plastic pollution has long plagued China, along with severe air pollution. Yet reports 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 of plastic inputs in oceans while putting China at 7%. 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). With Plastic China, Wang aimed to raise awareness of his homelands role in the global waste trade, and expose its negative repercussions on the Chinese population and environment. 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. to reduce and reuse their own plastic waste. 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. Yvan Schulz obtained his PhD from the Anthropology Institute, University of Neuchtel in February 2018. "People act in funny ways," she says. In the film, the main character, a bright girl named Peng Yijie, does not attend school, although she is already 11 years old. The REDcycle program which was suspended in November and points at Coles and Woolworths supermarkets were closed. Ran Zheng for NPR "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. This also explains why Wang Kuns plastic recycling workshop, like many others, relies on manual labour and a couple of unsophisticated and antiquated machines. When the inevitable collapse came, most of the companies went bankrupt, leaving city authorities having to pay to clean up the mess. 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. To the US and other developed countries, that's a lot less trouble to export waste to China. The suit led to an apology from the authorities in Linyi and a reduction in the kidnappings, beatings and forced abortions. Yeah, in China you'll meet tons of people who had siblings born while the one-child policy was in effect. "It has been so many years, and I have let the pain go," the mother of three says, eyes downcast. 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. 0000001315 00000 n a Chinese couple whose son was abducted in a hotel in 1988 have been reunited with after... Rest was buried in landfills or simply dumped and left to wash into rivers and now! Parallel to it for Americans is to think of it like marijuana laws ( see Sorace )... 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