0000001943 00000 n 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. You need an active subscription to post a comment. 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. Following the accepted narrative about China, its citizens might be expected to worship sons and disdain daughters. The mother of one of these middle schoolers holds her son close. The film premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in November 2016, and was shown at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. The Yangtze river, the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world, is an important water body in China. The smiles that break across their grubby faces belie a bleak existence for the families that scrape by sorting plastic waste. Garbage collectors called rag and bone men ply the alleys of the cities, pedaling . The . , 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. New York CNN Business . The country once imported nearly half of the planet's plastic recyclables. 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. He currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the China Centre, University of Oxford. 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). 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 news hit hard in the United States, which is home to about 60,000 children adopted from China, mostly girls. 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. In the film, the main character, a bright girl named Peng Yijie, does not attend school, although she is already 11 years old. 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. 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. (Liu 2014). Her dreams are daydreams, a way for her to escape the harsh reality she experiences on a daily basis. hb```"qVta1 FsD State media celebrated the news. Medical staff massage babies at an infant care center in Yongquan, in Chongqing municipality, in southwest China, on Dec. 15, 2016. Additionally, China currently tops the list of biggest greenhouse gas emitters though the US overtakes it for emissions per capita. Thus, in a way, Wang departs from the perspective of environmental dumping. Kun closed down the factory and became a truck driver a year after [the film] was made. Ontario. In 2017, China collected 215 million tonnes of urban household waste, according to the country's statistical yearbook. In August 2014, the little girl was able to go to school and she is in third grade now. 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. 0000002606 00000 n How much waste does China produce? hide caption, "The doctors would inject poison directly into the baby's skull to kill it," Chen says, drawing on recordings he made of interviews with hundreds of women and their families in Linyi. We desperately need large-scale investment into domestic recycling plants paired with less garbage being tossed aside every day by us, the ones who buy and discard, day in and day out. Giving birth to him was a huge risk and she took no chances. For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. Plastic China focuses on materially ambitious factory-owner Kun, his employee Peng, and . Back in the 1960s, more than 100 children - mostly abandoned, mostly babies and mostly girls - were brought over from Hong Kong to be adopted by British families. "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. Her son is part of the last generation of children in China whose births were ruled illegal at the time. A portrait of poverty, ambition and hope set in a world of waste. 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. There are clear signs that this space is shrinking nowadays, yet this does not stop many independent filmmakers from pursuing their mission (Berry 2017). hide caption. As a result of ocean plastic pollution, where plastics slowly break down into smaller debris and particles called microplastics. China is also by far the largest source of mismanaged plastic waste, and is the biggest offender of ocean plastic pollution. For instance, Gurao, once Chinas largest bra manufacturing hub, struggles with waste-related pollution of comparable gravity to that of neighbouring Guiyu, the countrys infamous e-waste recycling capital. Today, the ongoing secrecy and censorship makes it impossible to know how many died that night. There are two younger boys, Liu Zhuang, 5 and Liu Jian, 4, as well as newly born twin sisters. The problem The bike-sharing craze in China five years ago sucked in billions of dollars of investors' cash and clients' deposits that start-ups spent on millions of new bikes in an effort to grab market share. 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 . :v9s];"vE\ j{G=vs=_qq/w?/uynBRBViW)42xP.itM"2HX SJXr/^$,^J_gHIum1$OL@*R*06T4W*[>ypNA-y6J]yPW6VV Parents were not penalized for having twins, at least not according to the letter of the law. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, plastic consumption has soared, adding an extra 25,900 tonnes of plastics in the ocean thats equivalent to more than 2,000 double decker buses. , resulting in mounting plastic packaging. The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children. 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). Yet, have linked the Yangtze river as the one of the biggest sources of global plastic pollution, claiming the river to be responsible for more than half of all marine plastic pollution, but more recent studies found that the, Philippines accounts for more than one-third. 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). "Our main products are paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, mixed plastics . Election. Despite censorship, Wang Jiuliang has managed to reach a wide audience with Plastic China, and have considerable impact. This change will not be easy, but it must be done. The suit led to an apology from the authorities in Linyi and a reduction in the kidnappings, beatings and forced abortions. Inside, a middle-school student completes his homework. 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. by China's decision to focus on domestic recycling in an effort to clean up their own landfills is a slap in the face to our First World consumer culture. He lived in comfort and was treated preferentially by the Wei court. If we do nothing and continue to turn our beautiful world into a Wall-E-esque nightmare, then the fate of our civilization will be suicide by garbage. 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. The documentary is also a meditation on issues of gender inequality. 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. But even there Johnson found numerous stories of families going to great lengths . 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. 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. Moreover, Plastic China contains virtually no direct criticism of any government, state-owned enterprise, or other powerful entitya key difference with Under the Dome (qiong ding zhi xia 2015), another documentary on Chinas environmental predicament that also went viral and disappeared from the Internet in a matter of days. On average, only about. 0000022087 00000 n "These effects will be felt in the generation ahead. 0000035786 00000 n "Women have it all figured out now they won't have more kids even when they're told to have more!" One ton of unsorted waste was sold to China for about $9. No full, official . In the film, Peng Wenyuanwho comes from Sichuan province, belongs to the Yi ethnic group, and is almost illiteratecomplains repeatedly about his salary. The rest was buried in landfills or simply dumped and left to wash into rivers and . China boosts electric car fleet for public transport, Support award-winning independent journalism with Yi-Jie is an 11-year-old girl who works and lives at a plastics recycling facility in the documentary "Plastic China." The plastics recycling industry had a high-profile spotlight in late January . "If you carry it with you all the time, it gets too tiring.". 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. Image by: Our World in Data. 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). A burning armoured personnel carrier on 4 June 1989, near Tiananmen Square. 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. 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. one of the fairly recent ancesto. Ran Zheng for NPR 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. The rationale for implementing the policy was to reduce the growth rate of China's enormous population. Even if I had to go to prison and endure beatings, in the end, these children were able to survive. Not only does the country consume, at least one fifth of the worlds plastics. "Other doctors would artificially induce labor. From Jun 1 of that year, customers began to be charged for plastic shopping bags, and a total ban of ultrathin (less than 0.025mm thick) bags came into action. Plastic pollution has long plagued China, along with severe air pollution. "People act in funny ways," she says. ", A mother and a grandmother take care of a child in Beijing on Jan. 1, 2016. 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