what happened to the families in plastic china

One night in August 2008, the mother made a fateful decision. 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. But the legacy of the one-child rule is still painfully felt by many parents who suffered for having multiple children. Ran Zheng for NPR This has lead to a major shift in China, family is now seen as the 3 living generations . 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). It was followed very selectively. In this sense, Plastic China has arguably played a key role in the recent evolution of the trade in recyclable waste. For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. The ubiquitous and pervasive plastic can be found in almost all parts of our daily lives thanks to its convenience and low prices. 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. 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. In conclusion, Plastic China constitutes a broad reflexion on social problems and dilemmas in the post-socialist era. Ontario. Today's top India news headlines, news on Indian politics, elections, government, business, technology, and Bollywood. Despite censorship, Wang Jiuliang has managed to reach a wide audience with Plastic China, and have considerable impact. November 15, 2022. Viewers learn that this has to do with her status as a migrant, her familys meagre earnings, and her fathers alcoholism. The film also resonated with the study of Chinas so-called informal recycling world that I conducted in the mid-2010s (Schulz 2018). His research explores Chinas state project of ecological modernisation from the angle of e-waste reuse and recycling. Trailer for 'Plastic China' film by director Wang Jiuliang. 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). to reduce and reuse their own plastic waste. But the country is not ignorant of its environmental impacts, and has moved to take more aggressive strides to combat this exponentially growing problem. 0000023031 00000 n With almost a spooky resemblance to Wildenstein, the Bogdanoff brothers - like her - are still injecting and filling into their seventies. 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. Medical staff massage babies at an infant care center in Yongquan, in Chongqing municipality, in southwest China, on Dec. 15, 2016. Based on current rates, the countrys total population could reach up to 1.46 billion by 2028, resulting in even high amounts of waste. After 25 years as the world's salvage king, China refused to buy any recycled plastic scrap that wasn't 99.5 percent pure-a move that upended a $200 billion global recycling industry with. 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. Chen, the lawyer, mounted a class action lawsuit on behalf of Linyi's women. 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). However, the films relevance extends far beyond the issue of waste management. 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. 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). Plastic China focuses on materially ambitious factory-owner Kun, his employee Peng, and their families. Inside, a middle-school student completes his homework. The rest was buried in landfills or simply dumped and left to wash into rivers and . A burning armoured personnel carrier on 4 June 1989, near Tiananmen Square. HdU{PSW? Then in 2016, the state allowed two children. 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. Inside, a middle-school student completes his homework. 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. While more time is needed to analyse the bans impacts domestically, it has had rippling effects across global plastic pollution and management. But even there Johnson found numerous stories of families going to great lengths . 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. NPR isn't using her name to protect her identity because of the trauma she suffered. 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. It was featured in numerous festivals outside China, and has won several awards. 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 The low grade plastics normally sent to China consisted of plastic bags, food labels, coffee cups and more- all products that are normally used once before being tossed away. As a result, awareness of the social and environmental impact of the global trade in recyclables has increased substantially, both within and outside of China. (Liu 2014). 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. We all must initiate a seismic cultural shift that sees a serious slowing down of our relentless consumerism. At that point, it was already the world's most populous country. August 4, 2020 1:46pm. China Says It Will Allow Couples to Have 3 Children, Up From 2 The move is the Communist Party's latest attempt to reverse declining birthrates and avert a population crisis, but experts say it. Immediately afterwards, he embarked on a new project. In the last two years, the issue of waste exports to China has attractedconsiderable mediaand public attention. Now they are stepping away from a plastics lobbying . 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. "That requires buying them a car, an apartment. Because many prioritized having a son over a daughter, orphanages experienced a surge in baby girls who were abandoned or put up for adoption. The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children. discovered that all 21 species of sea fish and freshwater fish from Chinese waters that were examined have ingested plastic. 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. 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. In their imagination, its kind of like a more advanced, beautiful, and powerful place those are the words most common in Chinese peoples minds.. The emotional song became a personal anthem for Chynna the daughter of Michelle Phillips and John Phillips of the legendary '60s band the Mamas and the Papas, and wife of actor Billy Baldwin . The whenever is ambiguous, as his 11-year-old daughter Yi Jie tells the camera that hes been promising to send her to school since she was five. 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). Such a context makes it very risky for the latter to adopt a long-term perspective and invest in new equipment or techniques. 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. Image by: Our World in Data. 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's margarine tubs, clamshells, deli containers. 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. 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 . 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. 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. Election. "There is no use in trying to make sense of society. Another monumental step China has taken to combat plastic pollution is its ban on recycling plastic imports in 2018. 0000035786 00000 n And in May, after a new census showed the birth rate had slowed, China raised the cap to three children. 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. All the issues mentioned above are central to Wangs narrative in Plastic China. During the reform era, this has prevented them from enjoying key rights and public services in their place of residence. 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. She is especially protective of him. The . 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. 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. He asks Wang Kun, his boss and the owner of the recycling workshop the Pengs work in, for a raise. Made in China publications are open access and always available as a free download. "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. 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. 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. Much of the Western worlds waste was once bound for China. "I thought this is it if I do not have this child, my body will not be able to have any more.". Initially Feng. In China recycling is done by the trash collectors who specialize in different kinds of refuse rubber, aluminum, tin, plastic, paper and either collect these materials by going house to house or sort through the garbage, selling what they find to traders. 43 0 obj <> endobj xref 43 32 0000000016 00000 n This film debuted two years ago, but its relevance is striking in the wake of Chinas sudden refusal to continue importing foreign waste. 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. 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. 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. 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. "These effects will be felt in the generation ahead. "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. 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. However, the film is all too often reduced to its function as a tool for denouncing environmental dumping. 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). He and his wife persevered and had three sons. 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. 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 news hit hard in the United States, which is home to about 60,000 children adopted from China, mostly girls. The Qing . 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. Indeed, they cut across borders and sectors of economic activity. Global mismanaged waste in total. Families were already having fewer children in the 1970s, before the policy took force in 1979. , 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. 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 . 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 success of the first film got Wang invited to California, where he toured recycling plants as part of his next round of research. They dont know how the United States really is, because all they have received is information from Chinese TV, which is made by the Ministry of Media, Wang said. Puren was the youngest brother of the final Qing monarch Puyi, who ruled for four years until 1912. 03:15. 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 main character is the employee's daughter, who never gets sent to school because she is helping her parents watch her younger siblings and sort through mountains of shredded plastic. She builds forts inside the recyclables and rifles through Western magazines, piecing together clues about life beyond the garbage and enriching it with fantasies. 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. Just like Beijing Besieged by Waste, the movie uncovers a gnarly scene beyond the cosmopolitan city. 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. Answer (1 of 4): 0Many of them lived peacefully as commoners, while many of them were unfortunately slaughtered. 0000016680 00000 n For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. It has been slow to completely dismantle its massive family planning bureaucracy built up over the past four decades. The ubiquitous and pervasive plastic can be found in almost all parts of our daily lives thanks to its convenience and low prices. The suit led to an apology from the authorities in Linyi and a reduction in the kidnappings, beatings and forced abortions. Second, this prevents us from understanding why the film was censored in China, when the denunciation of waste imports actually fits with the Chinese states increasingly restrictive policies on this issue since the 2010s. Until there is a. Her body was giving her all the telltale signs that she was pregnant again. 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. A portrait of poverty, ambition and hope set in a world of waste. The new documentary 'Plastic China' plunges into the dirty side of recycling. 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. During that time, imperial China was replaced by the Republic of China. There are over 5,000 little unregulated recycling plants in the town alone, giving Wang plenty of subject options. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, two major sellers of plastic bottles, have made sweeping sustainability commitments. These economic penalties depleted his life savings, a financial impact that compounded over the ensuing years. 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. Fred Dufour/AFP via Getty Images Its river basin comprises one-fifth of the countrys land area, and supports and houses nearly one-third of the population. The U.S., Japan and Germany are all at the top of the list when it comes to exporting their used plastic. 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. Boost this article 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. In sum, China's exercise of power has been more hard than soft. The . Plastic China: Directed by Jiuliang Wang. 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. 0000001806 00000 n Now the world is scrambling to adjust. 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. 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 . 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. 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. 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 . Additionally, China currently tops the list of biggest greenhouse gas emitters though the US overtakes it for emissions per capita. Among the films many harrowing scenes is that of Pengs wife giving birth to her fourth child in the Wangs garden, with what looks like a total absence of medical assistance. 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. Some businesses have stepped up, too. 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. Bright-eyed children run between heaping piles of plastic, a worn-out worker spends his meager wages on alcohol, and a preteen girl gazes solemnly at Western product advertisements she picks out of the monstrous piles of trash around her home. Climate. Following the accepted narrative about China, its citizens might be expected to worship sons and disdain daughters. India News | Latest India News | Read latest and breaking news from India. Fish makes up the majority of diets for many people in China. 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. 0000035823 00000 n Plastic China by director Wang Jilang is a story of two families, one of which owns this plastic recycling facility while the other family is employed there. , resulting in mounting plastic packaging. 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). the mother laughs helplessly. 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. To compensate for this narrow focus, we need to look beyond the predominant reading. Her dreams are daydreams, a way for her to escape the harsh reality she experiences on a daily basis. Products. hide caption. Her worries these days are more mundane. The photographer-turned-director's debut documentary, 2011's Beijing Besieged by. Anxious about already strained public education and health care systems, China's leadership is reportedly considering ditching limits entirely. First of all his film tackles the problem of labour exploitation. This change will not be easy, but it must be done. 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. LINYI, China Outside, rain falls. When probed about why he doesnt send his kids to school, his reply is that he prefers to spend money on drinking, musing that his children can attend school for free whenever they return to his home village. 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%. Thus, in a way, Wang departs from the perspective of environmental dumping. What is the current state of plastic pollution in China and how does the country deal with it? Single-use plastics are also made almost entirely from fossil fuels. Plastic pollution has long plagued China, along with severe air pollution. 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. After six months of getting to know two families who worked at one small plant, Wang was allowed intimate access to their lives. 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. It was featured in numerous festivals outside China, and has won several awards. 0000002606 00000 n https%3A%2F%2Fearth.org%2Fchina-plastic-pollution%2F. Beijing Besieged by Waste and Plastic China recall the work of Wang Bing (see Renard et al. China is also by far the. After recording only 213 deaths and about 13,000 cases of COVID-19 from January 2020 to early 2022, the city is swamped by the current Omicron wave, which began at the start of the year and has . Environmental News, Data Analysis, Research & Policy Solutions. Either the government is already losing faith in the reality of its implementation, or it needs a bigger budget for advertising. She carried her son to term while hiding in a relative's house. The Yangtze river, the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world, is an important water body in China. 0000003466 00000 n This means that people eating fish have also been consuming plastics. 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.
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