what happened to the families in plastic china

Then in 2016, the state allowed two children. 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. 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. How much waste does China produce? New York CNN Business . Viewers learn that this has to do with her status as a migrant, her familys meagre earnings, and her fathers alcoholism. 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. Through my interviews with self-made entrepreneurs who live in the countryside or have rural origins, I came to the conclusion that, as a rule, these people did not enjoy any support from state authorities for changing their methods or upgrading their facilities in order to cause less pollution, and better protect workers. 0000002606 00000 n 0000000936 00000 n First of all his film tackles the problem of labour exploitation. You need an active subscription to post a comment. 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. The insane volume of sorted scraps are pushed through a machine that turns the plastic into a gross, grey sludge before it is transformed into small grey pellets. Twenty years later, the volume of. "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. 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 . 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). It is imperative that we completely eliminate unnecessary plastics, and that can only be achieved by radically changing our habits and becoming conscious of the environment with everything we do and everything we buy. the mother laughs helplessly. "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. Since taking office as president, Xi Jinping has striven to distinguish his government from the previous one. 0000024672 00000 n Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, two major sellers of plastic bottles, have made sweeping sustainability commitments. 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. Its massive local plastic production further contributes to Chinas lion share of global greenhouse emissions mainly from coal production. It is important to stress that, while these features of Chinas contemporary condition can be observed in rural recycling hubs, they are not unique to these places. Garbage collectors called rag and bone men ply the alleys of the cities, pedaling . 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 . Global mismanaged waste in total. 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. 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. "It has been so many years, and I have let the pain go," the mother of three says, eyes downcast. The U.S., Japan and Germany are all at the top of the list when it comes to exporting their used plastic. Anxious about already strained public education and health care systems, China's leadership is reportedly considering ditching limits entirely. 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. Acquiring this potent status symbol allows them to have the feelingand give others the impressionthat they have achieved wealth, and moved up the social ladder. It's margarine tubs, clamshells, deli containers. ", 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. China used to take much of it, but has banned imports of plastic waste so where does it now go? 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. In the film, Peng Wenyuanwho comes from Sichuan province, belongs to the Yi ethnic group, and is almost illiteratecomplains repeatedly about his salary. "There is no use in trying to make sense of society. But starting in 2005, the authorities began enforcing the policy with a renewed ferocity in Linyi. 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. India News | Latest India News | Read latest and breaking news from India. She is especially protective of him. 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. Immediately afterwards, he embarked on a new project. of the plastic used in China is recycled in some shape or form. Yet, towards the end of the film, the Wangs spend their entire savingsand even borrow moneyto purchase a vehicle for which they seem to have little practical need. 0000009053 00000 n Until there is a. Fred Dufour/AFP via Getty Images In other words, though it looks good exteriorly, it has a lot of interior problems (Kanthor 2017). 0000009529 00000 n 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. State media celebrated the news. 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 . All together, these measures are aligned with the countrys 2060 carbon neutrality targets. Her body was giving her all the telltale signs that she was pregnant again. your subscription today, Canadian Journalism Foundation Award for Climate Solutions Reporting. 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. In one interview about the film, Wang stated that: China is a country that is facelifted, concealed, faked and unnatural. There are two younger boys, Liu Zhuang, 5 and Liu Jian, 4, as well as newly born twin sisters. , resulting in mounting plastic packaging. Another factor that justifies adopting a broad interpretation of Plastic China is the wide range of social issues addressed by Wang. 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. 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 $200 billion global recycling industry with. The film does not tell its audience how this situation came about, but it is easy to associate it with rural migrants generally limited access to healthcare. The brother of China's last emperor who was pushed off the throne more than 100 years ago has died. Climate. Among contributing factors was Plastic China (suliao wangguo, 2016), a documentary directed by Wang Jiuliang. Plastic China focuses on materially ambitious factory-owner Kun, his employee Peng, and their families. Not only does the country consume, at least one fifth of the worlds plastics. Welcome to Wang Jiuliangs Plastic China, a quiet, intimate look into the lives of two Chinese families barely scraping a living by laboring at a small family run recycling plant. China had 1 million more births in 2016 than in 2015, following the end of the one-child policy. Children ride a toy train at a shopping mall in Beijing, on Oct. 30, 2015. A Chinese couple whose son was abducted in a hotel in 1988 have been reunited with him after 32 years. "Our main products are paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, mixed plastics . The British colony simply. The LEGO Foundation is awarding a total of DKK 900 million (approximately US$ 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. What was she hiding from? 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. When the ancestral temples were destroyed most families lost the records of their extended family. The photographer-turned-director's debut documentary, 2011's Beijing Besieged by. Its mostly a monotonous existence, consisting largely of wading through imported plastic and trash, and melting it in small industrial vats. Posted in Article, Work of Arts. 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. The . 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. 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. After six months of getting to know two families who worked at one small plant, Wang was allowed intimate access to their lives. Since the first protest on Nov. 26th, demonstrations popped up in every area of the country. Now the world is scrambling to adjust. His research explores Chinas state project of ecological modernisation from the angle of e-waste reuse and recycling. 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. $25,000 by April 5. 0000017854 00000 n The doctors strangled or drowned those babies.". And according to an Associated Press investigation, it continues to impose stricter controls over births including forced sterilizations among ethnic minorities, like the Turkic Uyghurs. He's the youngest of three children this mother had under China's one-child policy. The limit in most cases was just one child. 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. "Women have it all figured out now they won't have more kids even when they're told to have more!" ", A mother and a grandmother take care of a child in Beijing on Jan. 1, 2016. The film premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in November 2016, and was shown at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. "Despite all the overwhelming demographic evidence, they're saying, 'We need to control you,'" says the author, Fong. 43 0 obj <> endobj xref 43 32 0000000016 00000 n Wangs first two films reveal the strong influence of what some refer to as Chinas new documentary movement (Berry and Rofel 2010). The Yangtze river, the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world, is an important water body in China. The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children. 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. On average, only about. 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 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. But last year, China put the kibosh on . As a result of ocean plastic pollution, where plastics slowly break down into smaller debris and particles called microplastics. For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. Her worries these days are more mundane. He and his wife persevered and had three sons. discovered that all 21 species of sea fish and freshwater fish from Chinese waters that were examined have ingested plastic. It all started with a mint julep on a hot summer day. Mao Yin was snatched aged two, while his father stopped to get him some water on the way home. The Pengs precarious existence and the fact that they are basically left to fend for themselves is striking for both Chinese and foreign viewers. Trailer for 'Plastic China' film by director Wang Jiuliang. It was vicious," he says. Its river basin comprises one-fifth of the countrys land area, and supports and houses nearly one-third of the population. Grandmother take care of a child in Beijing, on Oct. 30, 2015 was abducted in a hotel 1988... Sweeping sustainability commitments then in 2016, the longest river in Asia and third-longest... Emperor who was pushed off the throne more than 100 years ago died..., plastic bottles, have made sweeping sustainability commitments so where does it now go, documentary... Since taking office as president, Xi Jinping has striven to distinguish his government from the angle of reuse... 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