0000009053 00000 n By the time the reality show ended in 2007 after 52 episodes across four seasons it was tainted with low ratings and a lot of controversy. 0000003355 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 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. 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. 0000439946 00000 n One night in August 2008, the mother made a fateful decision. 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. In other words, though it looks good exteriorly, it has a lot of interior problems (Kanthor 2017). Just like Beijing Besieged by Waste, the movie uncovers a gnarly scene beyond the cosmopolitan city. 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. China boosts electric car fleet for public transport, Support award-winning independent journalism with Global plastic waste generation by country. And so, ironically, now that people are allowed to have more children, they are increasingly reluctant to, because of the high cost of child care and education. B!$H BBAZ[:]nu+n:utvw=vvw9}#AaH"\mAnirF~'U44`~4w~gqci)kJ It was featured in numerous festivals outside China, and has won several awards. 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. 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. The film has been particularly closely associated with the issue of waste imports since July 2017, when the Chinese central government hit headlines domestically and internationally by announcing a ban on imports of 24 categories of waste, including many types of plastics (Voice of America 2018). By the container load, the cast-off plastic comes from Korea, Europe and the US. 0000009529 00000 n Today's top India news headlines, news on Indian politics, elections, government, business, technology, and Bollywood. Andy Wong/AP What happened to the little girl in plastic China? , resulting in mounting plastic packaging. 0000001315 00000 n INVERSE 2023 BDG Media, Inc. All rights reserved. 0000035786 00000 n Some of them were located in rural recycling hubs, but many were not. Climate. Image by: Our World in Data. 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. 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 . 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. "I thought this is it if I do not have this child, my body will not be able to have any more.". The rationale for implementing the policy was to reduce the growth rate of China's enormous population. In March 2018, China's environment minister at the time, Li Ganjie, noted that China used to import around 4 to 4.5 million tons of solid, unrecyclable trash. On Jan. 1, China enacted new legislation allowing all married couples to have two children. Image by: Our World in Data. In China, plastic pollution is starkly evident, attributed largely to the fact that the country is the worlds biggest producer and consumer of plastics. 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. 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. When his wife became pregnant again, he hoped for a son,. A recent book helps explain how PRC leaders think about the . This has lead to a major shift in China, family is now seen as the 3 living generations . He asks Wang Kun, his boss and the owner of the recycling workshop the Pengs work in, for a raise. Wangs camera catches heartbreaking images of Jie, the preteen with a collapsing weight of responsibility on her young shoulders. There are over 5,000 little unregulated recycling plants in the town alone, giving Wang plenty of subject options. Much like The Swan, a show that ran concurrently . His research explores Chinas state project of ecological modernisation from the angle of e-waste reuse and recycling. Boost this article This ambitious plan requires the full participation of producers to consumers and is an inspirational idea, though I hadnt even heard of it before digging through plastic research, and it doesnt seem to be very widely discussed. That part of the industry is very sensitive, and if you have nothing to do with them, you cant get in, Wang said. 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 . Made in China publications are open access and always available as a free download. 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. Despite censorship, Wang Jiuliang has managed to reach a wide audience with Plastic China, and have considerable impact. "Women have it all figured out now they won't have more kids even when they're told to have more!" Garbage collectors called rag and bone men ply the alleys of the cities, pedaling . The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children. "There is no point in controlling them. In August 2014, the little girl was able to go to school and she is in third grade now. The people who had a stake in it did not welcome the shooting.. Yeah, in China you'll meet tons of people who had siblings born while the one-child policy was in effect. 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). 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. 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. Ten years after China's infant milk tragedy, parents still won't trust their babies to local formula . 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. But Chinas contribution to the global plastic crisis does not end there. 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. Something doesn't add up here. A Chinese family has been forced to give up their pet dog after realizing they had actually adopted a black bear. Today, he lives in Maryland with his family. Not only does the country consume, at least one fifth of the worlds plastics. 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. the mother laughs helplessly. 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. Twenty-something Kun is a hard worker with a dream of buying a new car to boost his social status. 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. 0000019453 00000 n It followed reports in the Age last month that revealed thousands tonnes of soft. 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. Andy Wong/AP Now they are stepping away from a plastics lobbying . 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. Such a context makes it very risky for the latter to adopt a long-term perspective and invest in new equipment or techniques. Now, the countrys import ban has pushed some developed countries to find ways to reduce and reuse their own plastic waste. "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. However, it is also strongly implied that Yijies gender played a role in her parents decision to neglect her education. Viewers learn that this has to do with her status as a migrant, her familys meagre earnings, and her fathers alcoholism. "All we can do is go on living," she says. It has been ten months since China closed its doors to the world's recycling waste. The photographer-turned-directors debut documentary, 2011s Beijing Besieged by Waste, discovered the city-sized hills of garbage trucked to the outskirts of the Chinese capital, where displaced families lived in houses made of trash. This film tells a story about an unschooled 11-year-old girl Yi-Jie, she's a truly global child who learns the world through the United Nations of Wastes while working with her YI minority parents in this recycle workshop thousand miles away from their mountain village . "If you carry it with you all the time, it gets too tiring.". First, this narrow focus fails to do justice to the richness and complexity of Wangs second, cinema version of Plastic China, whichunlike the first version targeting the pressconstitutes a broad social commentary and critique. She builds forts inside the recyclables and rifles through Western magazines, piecing together clues about life beyond the garbage and enriching it with fantasies. 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. I came across many such sites while conducting research in semi-industrialised villages and small towns in Guangdong province in the mid-2010s. One ton of unsorted waste was sold to China for about $9. , where in 2019, it reportedly churned out about 5.3 million tonnes of plastics. But even there Johnson found numerous stories of families going to great lengths . In these excerpts, one finds a clear criticism, expressed in rather general terms, of Chinas development model during the reform era, especially the pursuit of wealth at all costs. Following Pen and his daughter Yi Jie, under the watchful eye of boss Kun, this film shows the lives of those harmed most by severe social inequality. Some businesses have stepped up, too. In the film, Peng Wenyuanwho comes from Sichuan province, belongs to the Yi ethnic group, and is almost illiteratecomplains repeatedly about his salary. 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. The Yangtze river, the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world, is an important water body in China. your subscription today, Canadian Journalism Foundation Award for Climate Solutions Reporting. 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 . She is especially protective of him. All together, these measures are aligned with the countrys 2060 carbon neutrality targets. The ubiquitous and pervasive plastic can be found in almost all parts of our daily lives thanks to its convenience and low prices.