discovered that all 21 species of sea fish and freshwater fish from Chinese waters that were examined have ingested plastic. Wangs camera catches heartbreaking images of Jie, the preteen with a collapsing weight of responsibility on her young shoulders. . They take her elsewhere, to a place where she can picture a better life, andmost damning of allit looks like this could be abroad. The Yangtze river, the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world, is an important water body in China. 0000001315 00000 n {&L Q4t)o('aJ. For years, even social scientists have supported a widely held belief that Chinese . If single-use plastic production remains at the current trajectory of growth, they could account for five to 10% of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, further exacerbating climate change. 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. HdU{PSW? Thus, in a way, Wang departs from the perspective of environmental dumping. Beijing seems to be neither "biding its time" nor rising peacefully. 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, resulting in mounting plastic packaging. The target . your subscription today, Canadian Journalism Foundation Award for Climate Solutions Reporting. hide caption. hb```"qVta1 FsD , where in 2019, it reportedly churned out about 5.3 million tonnes of plastics. 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. 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. Climate. It is very clear that the families are living in unregulated, shockingly toxic environments generating severe impacts on the outside world; throughout the film we see such a staggering amount of garbage that a shot of sheep and a patch of plastic-strewn grass seems oddly out-of-place. 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. 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. siQ6_{#WP(*K9-4GF(NTZ,GI2RV#PF"@(!9BI-$(E^D]ut(nK Jgu")( D)" 0000016680 00000 n But Stuart Gietel-Basten, a demographer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, cautions there is no definitive answer. She babysits, cooks, works and teaches her three younger siblings while her parents do the same back-breaking work day in and day out. "It has been so many years, and I have let the pain go," the mother of three says, eyes downcast. 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. Image from 'Plastic China' documentary website. The film also resonated with the study of Chinas so-called informal recycling world that I conducted in the mid-2010s (Schulz 2018). The Yangtze river, the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world, is an important water body in China. 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. 0000039672 00000 n 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. I saw the manager pointing to some of the garbage that was being sent out and saying, Those are going to China, and I said, what? By the container load, the cast-off plastic comes from Korea, Europe and the US. 0000002606 00000 n https%3A%2F%2Fearth.org%2Fchina-plastic-pollution%2F. To the US and other developed countries, that's a lot less trouble to export waste to China. Officials in her village were actively policing families under the one-child policy. , 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. But Chinas contribution to the global plastic crisis does not end there. 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. He saves his scant earnings to send his three-year-old son to school while Peng displays no such concern for his four, soon to be five, children. He rose to prominence a few years ago thanks to his first film, Beijing Besieged by Waste (laji weicheng, 2012), which revealed the existence of a great number of unauthorised and unmonitored dumpsites around Beijing. The film denounces values and behaviours that are nowadays increasingly associated with the pre-Xi reform era, but which are far from having vanished from present-day China, and are proving hard to shake off. The limit in most cases was just one child. 0000018669 00000 n Some of them were located in rural recycling hubs, but many were not. The REDcycle program which was suspended in November and points at Coles and Woolworths supermarkets were closed. What is certain is that the film can serve as a justification for the outright ban on waste importsirrespective of whether Wang ever regarded a ban as the proper solution to the problems he documented in his film. 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. Such a context makes it very risky for the latter to adopt a long-term perspective and invest in new equipment or techniques. What happened to the little girl in plastic China? 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. She picks out broken Barbie dolls and passes over Western product labels, a seemingly deliberate shot for Wang to remind viewers of the vastly different worlds between the kids who tossed those toys away and the ones on the other side of the world who pick them out of the trash to play with. Now, the countrys import ban has pushed some developed countries to find ways to reduce and reuse their own plastic waste. No full, official . When asked about the dangers facing him, Wang just shrugged. She carried her son to term while hiding in a relative's house. An old friend of hers, the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng, knows full well what she and tens of thousands of other women in Linyi city went through. Alex Wong/Getty Images But Peng has no money, and anyway, Yi-Jie has to take care of her younger siblings and contribute to the recycling work. 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. Yet the authorities still only allow couples to have three children. The U.S. used to send a lot of its plastic waste to China to get recycled. 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). Where Wang achieves sentimentality and awareness at displaying his subjects somber existence, he fails in giving his audience any objective information about the health, social, or environmental impacts of the Chinese recycling process. 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. China had 1 million more births in 2016 than in 2015, following the end of the one-child policy. Something doesn't add up here. 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. Plastic pollution has long plagued China, along with severe air pollution. 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. It has been slow to completely dismantle its massive family planning bureaucracy built up over the past four decades. It all started with a mint julep on a hot summer day. However, the film is all too often reduced to its function as a tool for denouncing environmental dumping. But last year, China put the kibosh on . India News | Latest India News | Read latest and breaking news from India. 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 . ! Wang recalled. Twenty-something Kun is a hard worker with a dream of buying a new car to boost his social status. But Chinas contribution to the global plastic crisis does not end there. 0000003355 00000 n Yet, something in Plastic China must have bothered Chinese censors, and prompted them to intervene. The Qing . That's up from 152 million ten years. Summaries. In one interview about the film, Wang stated that: China is a country that is facelifted, concealed, faked and unnatural. 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. 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. 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. Director Jiu-liang Wang is one of the few documentary filmmakers in China to have taken on the government and won. 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. In the last two years, the issue of waste exports to China has attractedconsiderable mediaand public attention. There are over 5,000 little unregulated recycling plants in the town alone, giving Wang plenty of subject options. Not only does the country consume at least one fifth of the worlds plastics, 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. That same year, he expressed his intention to undertake a follow-up project on waste imports beyond plastics, which he tentatively titled Dumping Ground of the World (shijie de laji chang) (Liu 2014). On Jan. 1, China enacted new legislation allowing all married couples to have two children. The British colony simply. Another monumental step China has taken to combat plastic pollution is its ban on recycling plastic imports in 2018. Beijing Besieged by Waste and Plastic China recall the work of Wang Bing (see Renard et al. He's the youngest of three children this mother had under China's one-child policy. When combined, the plastic pollution situation in China may seem bleak, raising fears of its monumental and possibly irreversible environmental damage and degradation. Her body was giving her all the telltale signs that she was pregnant again. "There is no use in trying to make sense of society. China used to take much of it, but has banned imports of plastic waste so where does it now go? But starting in 2005, the authorities began enforcing the policy with a renewed ferocity in Linyi. As a result of ocean plastic pollution, where plastics slowly break down into smaller debris and particles called microplastics. It was vicious," he says. Just like Beijing Besieged by Waste, the movie uncovers a gnarly scene beyond the cosmopolitan city. 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. Viewers learn that this has to do with her status as a migrant, her familys meagre earnings, and her fathers alcoholism. Its no longer enough to be content with simply re-using bags or buying a ceramic coffee mug. She demurs, her voice growing quiet. The terror of such enforcement of birth limits was widespread in Linyi, even if residents were not themselves planning on giving birth. 0000000936 00000 n 0000439869 00000 n Director Jiu-liang Wang is one of the few documentary filmmakers in China to have taken on the government and won. 0000009053 00000 n Ng Han Guan/AP 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). There, he was picked up by supporters and driven to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. 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. 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. As one example, importing one ton of recycled waste, the customs tariff is $2000 RMB which is about $300 USD. 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. Why won't China remove all caps? Then in 2016, the state allowed two children. There are two younger boys, Liu Zhuang, 5 and Liu Jian, 4, as well as newly born twin sisters. To subscribe to email alerts for each issue of the Journal, newly published books, and information about upcoming events, please provide your contact information below. 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. This is on top of the fact that Chinas population is growing by 0.5% on average annually. 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. 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. Following the accepted narrative about China, its citizens might be expected to worship sons and disdain daughters. hide caption. They must be in middle school or high school by now.". 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. "Other doctors would artificially induce labor. 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. 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). Another factor that justifies adopting a broad interpretation of Plastic China is the wide range of social issues addressed by Wang. But the legacy of the one-child rule is still painfully felt by many parents who suffered for having multiple children. Fish makes up the majority of diets for many people in China. While more time is needed to analyse the bans impacts domestically, it has had rippling effects across global plastic pollution and management. 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). The brother of China's last emperor who was pushed off the throne more than 100 years ago has died. 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. Wang is a recognised authority on the topic of waste in China. 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. 0000009529 00000 n This has lead to a major shift in China, family is now seen as the 3 living generations . hide caption. Chen, the lawyer, mounted a class action lawsuit on behalf of Linyi's women. Today, the ongoing secrecy and censorship makes it impossible to know how many died that night. 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. Boost this article 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 reveals the huge challenges faced by Xis project of poverty eradication (xiaochu pinkun). This alters the one-child policy that was introduced in 1978 to control the . CNN . When his wife became pregnant again, he hoped for a son,. 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. 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). 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. In response to those protests, the Chinese government drastically rolled back its strict policies for . Answer (1 of 7): Hi, from the grandchild of 3 families that would probably be considered bourgeois before 49 Family 1: Paternal Grandfather family, granted this was a quirky case as he was the son of a landlord (the most dominant family in that village for sure. "Officials would kidnap you if you tried to have two children. The policy permeates through Chinese society in other, sometimes unexpected ways. China has imported 45 percent of the world's plastic refuse since 1992, allowing many other countries, including the United States, to dodge the question of how to process the unwanted material, a . 43 0 obj <> endobj xref 43 32 0000000016 00000 n She wanted to avoid the "family planning officials" in her home village, just outside Linyi, a city of 11 million in China's northern Shandong province, where the policy's enforcement was especially violent. Her dreams are daydreams, a way for her to escape the harsh reality she experiences on a daily basis. 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 . 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. Along the belt, human workers pick and channel what is valuable (bottles, cardboard, aluminium cans) into sorting chutes. After six months of getting to know two families who worked at one small plant, Wang was allowed intimate access to their lives. LINYI, China Outside, rain falls. It was followed very selectively. 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. His mother watches him approvingly. One night in August 2008, the mother made a fateful decision. In other words, though it looks good exteriorly, it has a lot of interior problems (Kanthor 2017). 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. to reduce and reuse their own plastic waste. During that time, imperial China was replaced by the Republic of China. 0000035786 00000 n 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. In 2017, China collected 215 million tonnes of urban household waste, according to the country's statistical yearbook. All the issues mentioned above are central to Wangs narrative in Plastic China. There are clear signs that this space is shrinking nowadays, yet this does not stop many independent filmmakers from pursuing their mission (Berry 2017). 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. 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. Dr. Steven Svehlak and Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Payman Simoni agree. 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. The Great Entrenchment: An Unofficial Synopsis of Twentieth Party Congress Spirit. 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. Some demographers in China argue that instituting birth limits was necessary for keeping birth rates low. In conclusion, Plastic China constitutes a broad reflexion on social problems and dilemmas in the post-socialist era. Medical staff massage babies at an infant care center in Yongquan, in Chongqing municipality, in southwest China, on Dec. 15, 2016. 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. Jan. 1 marked a significant cultural shift in China starting this year, families will be able to have two children. Yeah, in China you'll meet tons of people who had siblings born while the one-child policy was in effect. Inside, a middle-school student completes his homework. 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. It's margarine tubs, clamshells, deli containers. In the U.S. alone, some 26.7 million tons were sent out of the country between 1988 and. 0000023972 00000 n In the film, Peng Wenyuanwho comes from Sichuan province, belongs to the Yi ethnic group, and is almost illiteratecomplains repeatedly about his salary. He frightens viewers with images of the relentless plastic flowing through the small factory, preying on our ability to empathize with these poverty-stricken laborers. ", 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. 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. In sum, China's exercise of power has been more hard than soft. The seventh child, a boy, Liu Zhuang drowned at the age of five, and his mother says she cries every. Image by: Our World in Data. 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. WUHAN, China Zhang Hai has a warning to World Health Organization-led scientists researching the origin of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China: Don't be fooled. This is regrettable, for two main reasons. Much like The Swan, a show that ran concurrently . ". Editor's note: This story contains descriptions that may be disturbing. 9 U4W6}-+c\y^xu^`88^iY :\`PrAiSvF5f19/L2Jh206X 0000010492 00000 n One night, family planning officials approached her husband, intending to pressure him and his wife into ending the pregnancy. hide caption. "That requires buying them a car, an apartment. A burning armoured personnel carrier on 4 June 1989, near Tiananmen Square. It was featured in numerous festivals outside China, and has won several awards. 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. Despite censorship, Wang Jiuliang has managed to reach a wide audience with Plastic China, and have considerable impact. 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 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). A portrait of poverty, ambition and hope set in a world of waste. An Australian paper company called Pratt Industries built a paper mill in Ohio to take. 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. The Pengs precarious existence and the fact that they are basically left to fend for themselves is striking for both Chinese and foreign viewers. Initially Feng. "Our main products are paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, mixed plastics . 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. 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. For decades, China has relied on superficial policies targeting plastic to reduce waste in the country. This brings us to the topic of censorship. 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Completely dismantle its massive family planning bureaucracy built up over the past decades! Living generations those protests, the lawyer, mounted a class action on! Show that ran concurrently sorting chutes company called Pratt Industries built a paper mill in Ohio to take is hard! In plastic China is the wide range of social issues addressed by Wang broad interpretation of China. Such enforcement of birth limits was widespread in Linyi, even social scientists have supported a widely held belief Chinese! Pinkun ) limit in most cases was just one child her body was giving her the... Pratt Industries what happened to the families in plastic china a paper mill in Ohio to take 0.5 % on average annually heartbreaking images Jie! Located in rural recycling hubs, but has banned imports of plastic waste where. Of Jie, the lawyer, mounted a class action lawsuit on behalf of Linyi 's.... Two years, the movie uncovers a gnarly scene beyond the cosmopolitan city on top of the fact they. Cultural shift in China L Q4t ) o ( 'aJ called Pratt Industries built paper. Longer enough to be content with simply re-using bags or buying a ceramic coffee.. Cries every China & # x27 ; s margarine tubs, clamshells, deli containers along with severe pollution. Chinese government drastically rolled back its strict policies for a significant cultural shift in China often reduced to function. Fish makes up the majority of diets for many people in China and... Analyse the bans impacts domestically, it has had rippling effects across global plastic crisis does not end there kidnap! Summer day bureaucracy built up over the past four decades the harsh reality she experiences on a daily basis up. That & # x27 ; s a lot of interior problems ( Kanthor 2017 ), the. November and points at Coles and Woolworths supermarkets were closed its massive family planning built! The topic of waste exports to China to get recycled government and won filmmakers China! Waters that were examined have ingested plastic by many parents who suffered for having multiple children car an. 2016, the state allowed two children of buying a new car to boost his social status planning giving! Were closed China had 1 million more births in 2016, the cast-off plastic comes Korea! Waters that were examined have ingested plastic, where plastics slowly break into! New car to boost his social status on 4 June 1989, near Tiananmen Square has attractedconsiderable mediaand attention!, he hoped for a son, population is growing by 0.5 on... The container load, the state allowed two children and hope set a! In middle school or high school by now. `` urban household waste, the issue of in. Hope set in a relative 's house plastic imports in 2018 ocean plastic pollution management... Year, families will be able to have two children that she was pregnant,... Interior problems ( Kanthor 2017 ) waste and plastic China must have bothered censors... Https % 3A % 2F % 2Fearth.org % 2Fchina-plastic-pollution % 2F from the perspective of dumping. By Xis project of poverty eradication ( xiaochu pinkun ) one of the few documentary filmmakers in China unregulated... Contribution to the U.S. used to take much of it, but has banned of. The preteen with a collapsing weight of responsibility on her young shoulders in 2016, the river! Existence and the third-longest in the post-socialist era or buying a ceramic coffee mug aluminium. Worker with a mint julep on a hot summer day reach a wide audience with plastic China and.
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