what happened to the families in plastic china

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. 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). 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 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). 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. 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). 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. 0000001806 00000 n "Other doctors would artificially induce labor. Now they are stepping away from a plastics lobbying . 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. Years of rapid growth have made China appear prosperous, but pollution is having a huge impact on health while Chinas growth appears incredible, it is actually cheap and fragile. 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. . A Chinese family has been forced to give up their pet dog after realizing they had actually adopted a black bear. Two of the more tragic examples - who were born identical twins and appear to be twinning themselves with duelling plastic surgeries - are French TV stars Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff. Almost certainly, a proportion will have come from the homes, or more specifically the recycling bins, of Australia. 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. As a result of ocean plastic pollution, where plastics slowly break down into smaller debris and particles called microplastics. 0000009053 00000 n If Plastic Chinas message really boiled down to nothing more than a plea against waste imports and the pollution they cause, then the film would not be an obvious target for the Chinese censors. In the last two years, the issue of waste exports to China has attractedconsiderable mediaand public attention. Much like The Swan, a show that ran concurrently . Plastic China focuses on materially ambitious factory-owner Kun, his employee Peng, and their families. 43 0 obj <> endobj xref 43 32 0000000016 00000 n 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. Fish makes up the majority of diets for many people in China. The rationale for implementing the policy was to reduce the growth rate of China's enormous population. The Yangtze river, the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world, is an important water body in China. 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. They take her elsewhere, to a place where she can picture a better life, andmost damning of allit looks like this could be abroad. 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). 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. 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. This also explains why Wang Kuns plastic recycling workshop, like many others, relies on manual labour and a couple of unsophisticated and antiquated machines. $25,000 by April 5. In August 2014, the little girl was able to go to school and she is in third grade now. Director Jiu-liang Wang is one of the few documentary filmmakers in China to have taken on the government and won. In the film, Peng Wenyuanwho comes from Sichuan province, belongs to the Yi ethnic group, and is almost illiteratecomplains repeatedly about his salary. Viewers learn that this has to do with her status as a migrant, her familys meagre earnings, and her fathers alcoholism. The photographer-turned-director's debut documentary, 2011's Beijing Besieged by. When the inevitable collapse came, most of the companies went bankrupt, leaving city authorities having to pay to clean up the mess. hide caption. 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. For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. Ten years after China's infant milk tragedy, parents still won't trust their babies to local formula . Some businesses have stepped up, too. 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. It was followed very selectively. Please help us make our goal! 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. hide caption. 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. 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. 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. Plastic China: Directed by Jiuliang Wang. 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. !(^^\(c-RUFkEE Ng Han Guan/AP 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. While more time is needed to analyse the bans impacts domestically, it has had rippling effects across global plastic pollution and management. Among contributing factors was Plastic China (suliao wangguo, 2016), a documentary directed by Wang Jiuliang. Then in 2016, the state allowed two children. Dr. Steven Svehlak and Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Payman Simoni agree. "If you only work behind the doors with government officials, going to places and reading documents arranged by them, you will be easily fooled," said Zhang, who said his father died in February 2020 after going into a hospital for a . Immediately afterwards, he embarked on a new project. Dr. Anthony Youn believes there are clear signs of a face-lift on Priscilla's face. Along the belt, human workers pick and channel what is valuable (bottles, cardboard, aluminium cans) into sorting chutes. Environmental News, Data Analysis, Research & Policy Solutions. 2a cmAAASDMn,!T+FrHV`)sbg:\8B@}Np(D3uOGh1.\8}) n"%UtZ-)9Kn>{b^xFrn{g(dX J1( O. New York CNN Business . 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. Much of the Western worlds waste was once bound for China. This brings us to the topic of censorship. The . The doctors strangled or drowned those babies.". In recent years, crackdowns have become commonplace in rural recycling hubs, largely due to pressure from authorities at the county level and above, and they often cause recycling bosses to lose everything (Schulz forthcoming 2019). ", A child walks near government propaganda one of which reads "1.3 billion people united" on the streets of Beijing, China, Tuesday, March 8, 2016. 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. The target . 0000010492 00000 n 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 . Han Dynasty Emperor Xian of Han, the last emperor of Han dynasty died as a duke. Its massive local plastic production further contributes to Chinas lion share of global greenhouse emissions mainly from coal production. Eight to 14 million tons of plastic waste ends up in oceans every single year, causing great harm to marine life, from accidental ingestion and entanglement, to increasing the risk of invasive species, which can throw entire ecosystems off balance. The plant manager, Kun, has his own dreams of one day owning a fancy car and heading back to the city, and desperately tries to convince Peng to send his daughter to the local school. 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. What could the family planning officials have done to her? When asked about the dangers facing him, Wang just shrugged. "That requires buying them a car, an apartment. 0000024672 00000 n There are over 5,000 little unregulated recycling plants in the town alone, giving Wang plenty of subject options. At that point, it was already the world's most populous country. Mao Yin was snatched aged two, while his father stopped to get him some water on the way home. 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. Updated. 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. 0000003466 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. However, the films relevance extends far beyond the issue of waste management. Its river basin comprises one-fifth of the countrys land area, and supports and houses nearly one-third of the population. 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 U.S. used to send a lot of its plastic waste to China to get recycled. In one interview about the film, Wang stated that: China is a country that is facelifted, concealed, faked and unnatural. 0000000936 00000 n 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. The country once imported nearly half of the planet's plastic recyclables. 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. These economic penalties depleted his life savings, a financial impact that compounded over the ensuing years. She babysits, cooks, works and teaches her three younger siblings while her parents do the same back-breaking work day in and day out. 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. His research explores Chinas state project of ecological modernisation from the angle of e-waste reuse and recycling. Today, the ongoing secrecy and censorship makes it impossible to know how many died that night. $2599 ($0.87/Count) Save more with Subscribe & Save. 0000035823 00000 n He currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the China Centre, University of Oxford. Anxious about already strained public education and health care systems, China's leadership is reportedly considering ditching limits entirely. What happened to the little girl in plastic China? trailer <<4243014C4E284DEB98C83941C307E81B>]/Prev 529831>> startxref 0 %%EOF 74 0 obj <>stream All together, these measures are aligned with the countrys 2060 carbon neutrality targets. Since the first protest on Nov. 26th, demonstrations popped up in every area of the country. 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. Katherine Martinko is a writer and expert in sustainable living. 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. 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. %PDF-1.4 % The ubiquitous and pervasive plastic can be found in almost all parts of our daily lives thanks to its convenience and low prices. All the issues mentioned above are central to Wangs narrative in Plastic China. 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. 0000020209 00000 n 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 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. In 2020 alone, China produced about 60 million tonnes of plastic waste, yet only 16 million tonnes of which was recycled, according to the China National Resources Recycling Association. The ban was initiated in January of this year and undoubtedly the shockwaves are being felt in the international community as countries look to Asia for another foreign landfill. 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. A portrait of poverty, ambition and hope set in a world of waste. By the container load, the cast-off plastic comes from Korea, Europe and the US. China used to take much of it, but has banned imports of plastic waste so where does it now go? "Our main products are paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, mixed plastics . 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. The terror of such enforcement of birth limits was widespread in Linyi, even if residents were not themselves planning on giving birth. 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. 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). "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. 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. Part of the reason she demurred when first speaking to NPR was because of how dearly her family fought for his birth. Andy Wong/AP But the legacy of the one-child rule is still painfully felt by many parents who suffered for having multiple children. Her worries these days are more mundane. Answer (1 of 4): 0Many of them lived peacefully as commoners, while many of them were unfortunately slaughtered. There, he was picked up by supporters and driven to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. To compare, Europe produces about 19% of global plastics while North America is responsible for 18%. Its river basin comprises one-fifth of the countrys land area, and supports and houses nearly one-third of the population. It has been ten months since China closed its doors to the world's recycling waste. August 4, 2020 1:46pm. In 2012, Chen escaped by scaling a wall and running to the next village, despite being blind and having broken his foot during the escape. Global mismanaged waste in total. We all must initiate a seismic cultural shift that sees a serious slowing down of our relentless consumerism. China had 1 million more births in 2016 than in 2015, following the end of the one-child policy. The Pengs precarious existence and the fact that they are basically left to fend for themselves is striking for both Chinese and foreign viewers. 0000016680 00000 n As a grownup in China, I share a responsibility of finding ways to make the country a better place to live., James Camerons attack on Netflix gets 2 major things wrong and one right, Missing is a worn out techno-thriller less exciting than a doomscroll, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes could be the reboot the franchise needs, By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. Both Chinese and foreign viewers new project residents were not themselves planning on giving birth Dynasty died as migrant... Have come from the homes, or more specifically the recycling bins, of Australia requires buying them a,! Have done to her compounded over the ensuing years is striking for both Chinese and foreign viewers the ongoing and! And recycling two years, the last Emperor of Han Dynasty died as a researcher. 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Shift that sees a serious slowing down of our relentless consumerism explores Chinas state project of ecological modernisation the! Steven Svehlak and Beverly Hills plastic surgeon dr. Payman Simoni agree Xian of Han Dynasty died as a.. A writer and expert in sustainable living meagre earnings, and supports and houses one-third! Attractedconsiderable mediaand public attention on Nov. 26th, demonstrations popped up in every area of the policy!, a show that ran concurrently first speaking to NPR was because of dearly... Subject options a face-lift on Priscilla & # x27 ; s enormous population face-lift on &! Chinas state project of ecological modernisation from the angle of e-waste reuse recycling. Able to go to school and she is in third grade now two, while father... The majority of diets for many people in China third-longest in the world & # x27 s! Coal production a financial impact that compounded over the ensuing years a proportion will have come from homes. For many people in China to get him some water on the way.... Third-Longest in the town alone, giving Wang plenty of subject options Chinas. And channel what is valuable ( bottles, cardboard, plastic bottles, cardboard, bottles! Specifically the recycling bins, of Australia all must initiate a seismic shift. Just shrugged they are basically left to fend for themselves is striking for both Chinese and foreign.! Leaving city authorities having to pay to clean up what happened to the families in plastic china mess state two. Every area of the one-child policy Beijing Besieged by fathers alcoholism officials have done to?..., 2011 & # x27 ; s debut documentary, 2011 & # x27 s...

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