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. 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 . Plastic China focuses on materially ambitious factory-owner Kun, his employee Peng, and their families. For some, the pain is still too much to bear. 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. "Other doctors would artificially induce labor. The Yangtze river, the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world, is an important water body in China. It was followed very selectively. 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 . 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. 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. 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. Either the government is already losing faith in the reality of its implementation, or it needs a bigger budget for advertising. 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. 0000002606 00000 n As a result of ocean plastic pollution, where plastics slowly break down into smaller debris and particles called microplastics. 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. Additionally, China currently tops the list of biggest greenhouse gas emitters though the US overtakes it for emissions per capita. 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. Thus, in a way, Wang departs from the perspective of environmental dumping. Jan. 1 marked a significant cultural shift in China starting this year, families will be able to have two children. 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. Since the first protest on Nov. 26th, demonstrations popped up in every area of the country. 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. 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. In 2016, the Ontario government released its Strategy for a Waste-Free Ontario, diverting our wasteful ways towards a completely circular economy (zero-waste) by 2050. One ton of unsorted waste was sold to China for about $9. This prompted the Chinese government to introduce a raft of new laws and regulations to limit plastic waste in 2020, and announced a plan for 2021 to 2025 which aims to further improve the management of the entire chain of plastic pollution. :v9s];"vE\ j{G=vs=_qq/w?/uynBRBViW)42xP.itM"2HX SJXr/^$,^J_gHIum1$OL@*R*06T4W*[>ypNA-y6J]yPW6VV 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). 2014 and Persico 2010) and Zhao Liang (see Sorace 2017), among other leading Chinese independent filmmakers. 0000022087 00000 n China implemented the policy of limiting each family to one child in 1979 to slow the growth of the country's population. ! Wang recalled. 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. 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 . Puren was the youngest brother of the final Qing monarch Puyi, who ruled for four years until 1912. "The policy was wrong and what we did with Chen was right," says a neighbor of Chen, the lawyer who sued the city of Linyi. "If you carry it with you all the time, it gets too tiring.". Some of them were located in rural recycling hubs, but many were not. "There is no use in trying to make sense of society. 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. 0000001315 00000 n "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 includes a ban on free shopping and carrier bags a 2016 survey data 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. "Women have it all figured out now they won't have more kids even when they're told to have more!" 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. 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. After six months of getting to know two families who worked at one small plant, Wang was allowed intimate access to their lives. And I was carrying a camera, so it was especially tough at the beginning. There is something profoundly disturbing in the Wangs purchase of a shiny new sedan car. State media celebrated the news. 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. Her body was giving her all the telltale signs that she was pregnant again. 0000017207 00000 n The Pengs precarious existence and the fact that they are basically left to fend for themselves is striking for both Chinese and foreign viewers. The new documentary 'Plastic China' plunges into the dirty side of recycling. 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. 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. Indeed, they cut across borders and sectors of economic activity. 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 . On Jan. 1, China enacted new legislation allowing all married couples to have two children. 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. 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. However, the films relevance extends far beyond the issue of waste management. Ran Zheng for NPR Whats more, about 91% of all plastic that has ever been made is not recycled, meaning that plastic which can take up to 500 years to decompose keeps accumulating and degrading our natural environments. Editor's note: This story contains descriptions that may be disturbing. 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. No one can afford that," she complains. Beijing Besieged by Waste and Plastic China recall the work of Wang Bing (see Renard et al. 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. Wangs 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. Alex Wong/Getty Images "Our main products are paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, mixed plastics . B!$H BBAZ[:]nu+n:utvw=vvw9}#AaH"\mAnirF~'U44`~4w~gqci)kJ A Chinese couple whose son was abducted in a hotel in 1988 have been reunited with him after 32 years. 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. This is on top of the fact that Chinas population is growing by 0.5% on average annually. For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. A further issue highlighted in the film is that of conspicuous consumption. First of all his film tackles the problem of labour exploitation. 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 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. It forces us to re-examine our waste habits and confront the reality that every time we throw out our beloved Tim Hortons coffee cups, we are poisoning our environment at an alarming rate. 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. Almost certainly, a proportion will have come from the homes, or more specifically the recycling bins, of Australia. That was a period where China's growth started booming. The . 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. It is therefore not surprising that Plastic China is generally invoked, both within and outside of China, in connection with the global capitalist system that, for many years at least, allowed relatively rich countries to pass the burden of pollution on to China. 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. hide caption. 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. No full, official . 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. The people who had a stake in it did not welcome the shooting.. It was vicious," he says. The state-owned company was recently, named the third-largest single-use plastic waste producer in the world. Ten years after China's infant milk tragedy, parents still won't trust their babies to local formula . The . 0000019453 00000 n It has been slow to completely dismantle its massive family planning bureaucracy built up over the past four decades. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. 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. An Australian paper company called Pratt Industries built a paper mill in Ohio to take. 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. hide caption. 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. 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