The Informal Economy that Recycles 90% of China’s Waste

China’s War on Waste

Al Jazeera (2019)

Film Review

China’s War on Waste looks at a culture that creates and discards more products than any other society in the world. Despite its centrally planned economy, there are many ways in which China’s economy is beyond the control of central government. This relates, in part, to production decisions approved by (often corrupt) local officials and, in part, to an extensive informal economy under no official control.

China’s 2017 ban on imported waste was a first step in Beijing’s effort to shut down the informal waste sector. Thanks largely to informal rubbish scavengers, at present China recycles  90% of its recyclable waste. This figure is more than double the rate of most industrialized countries.

The plastic landfill waste gathered by informal waste collectors is resold three to four times before reaching a reprocessing center. Along with their 2017 ban on imported waste, China also shut down thousands of unlicensed backyard reprocessing centers that produced dangerous toxins affecting both the environment and worker health. Many of these centers have since reopened and continue to operate illegally.

The government is also trying to put informal garbage pickers out of business by demolishing the shacks they live in.*

Some of these informal scavengers have been replaced by 5,000 automated recycling machines that reward users for by depositing one cent in their bank account for every bottle they insert.

China hopes to incinerate 50% of Beijing’s waste by 2020 – in plants that recapture the heat produced to generate electricity. At present, the city incinerates one-eighth of its garbage, despite the toxic dioxins existing plants release to the air.

The government has also introduced curbside recycling in some areas. Thus far, the uptake by residents has been poor.

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*They put the garbage picker featured in the film out of business by erecting a wall between his home and the street. He can climb the wall to seek casual laboring jobs but can’t take his bicycle-powered recycling rig with him.

 

China’s Emergence as a 21st Century Superpower

The China Complex: the Big Picture – Part 2

Al Jazeera (2019)

Film Review

Part 2 starts with the 1989 so-called Tiananmen Square “massacre,” which recent evidence suggests was a failed CIA-instigated color revolution.* Five months later, the Berlin Wall would collapse. According to historian F William Engdahl, the CIA also played a much greater role in the collapse of the Soviet Union than they have officially admitted.**

The 1990s saw an increasingly prosperous middle class under Deng Xiaoping’s “Strike Harsh” policy. This is described as harsh “extra legal” punishments against dissidents and “hooligans.” Much of this repression was directed against violent protests by Tibetan  (China annexed the protectorate of Tibet in 1951) and Uyhgar separatists. Though not mentioned in the documentary, both groups continue to receive significant funding and support from the CIA (see How the CIA Uses the Uyghurs to Destabilize China).

Uyghur jihadists have received additional funding and support from Turkey. With a stated goal of liberating Xinjian province as independent East Turkmenistan, they have been conducting major bombing campaigns against transportation and other government facilities.

In 2019, documents leaked by US intelligence supposedly indicate China is holding two million Uyghurs in concentration camps, as well as forbidding them to have bears or to display Arabic symbols. Given that China is far less Islamaphobic than the US, I am more inclined to believe Chinese claims the CIA photos are of voluntary vocational centers serving unemployed Uyghur youth as part of a government deradicalization program. See How Dare the US Lecture China About the Rights of Muslims

In Part 2, commentators also discuss growing Western concerns (after China joined the WTO in 2001) that it would usurp the US and Japan as the world’s major trading partners. These concerns sharply escalated when China literally saved the world from economic collapse in 2008 – by buying up a large quantity of US Treasury bonds and using central bank funding to stimulate internal economic growth.

Filmmakers go on to describe Xi Jinping’s accession to the Chinese presidency in 2012 and the immense popularity of his “Tigers and Flowers” anti-corruption campaign. The latter has resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of many notoriously corrupt local officials.

The documentary then explores China’s Belt and Road trade program that now extends from Asia into Africa. There China has essentially replaced the World Bank in handing out infrastructure development loans to struggling economies.

The film concludes by describing the trade war Trump started with China in 2018, allegedly to reduce the country’s trade surplus with the US and to punish them for failing to enforce international property treaties.

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*See Tiananmen Square: The Failure of a 1989 US-inspired Color Revolution and The US-China Trade War Can be Traced Back to the Failed Tiananmen Square Color Revolution. According to several US reporters on the scene, there were no actual deaths when Chinese tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square (see The Tiananmen Square Massacre: Facts Fiction and Propaganda/).

**See Russia’s Criminal Oligarchy and the Rule of Bush Senior and the CIA

Al Jazeera’s Take on China

The China Complex: The Big Picture – Part 1

Al Jazeera (2019)

Film Review

This two-part documentary traces historical and cultural linkages to China’s current authoritarian style of government. It features commentary by a range of Chinese experts on whether China’s policy of “stability at all costs” is good or bad for the Chinese economy and people.

In my view the series’s key weakness of is its failure to examine the dilemma China faces in suppressing violent dissent (eg the Tibetan, Uygher and Hong Kong separatist movements) that is aided and abetted by foreign powers (mainly the CIA). There is a vague mention at the end of Part 2 about the foreign powers behind the Hong Kong protests putting China in a “lose-lose” situation (ie they potentially lose political control if they do nothing vs losing face internationally if they crack down on violent protestors).

The second major weakness is the documentary’s failure to explore the role of China’s unique monetary system in its unprecedented economic growth. At present it’s the only global power in which the government issues most of the nation’s money by spending it directly into the economy (aka sovereign money). In other countries, private banks create the vast majority of money in circulation when they issue loans.*

The most pro-China of the commentators attributes China’s economic miracle to their “stability at all cost” (ie repression of dissidents and “hooligans”). I don’t believe this is true. Freedom from the massive public and private debt that plague most industrialized nations has made for much more rapid (public and private) infrastructure development in China.

Aside from these weaknesses, the documentary provides valuable insight into Chinese history and culture, topics rarely taught in western schools. Part 1 covers the period from the inauguration of dynastic rule by Yu the Great in 2070 BC to the 1989 Tienanmen Square protest. Most westerners are unaware that China was a major international power from the 4th – 18th century AD, with a vast trading empire and cultural influence extending well beyond its borders. Its subjects enjoyed prosperity equal to that to that of Europe prior to their colonization by England and other European power.

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*In the US, UK and New Zealand, for example, government only creates 2-3% of money in circulation. 97-98% is created out of thin air (as credit) when banks issue loans. Even governments borrow from banks to pay for spending that exceeds tax revenue (the main source of government debt). See The Battle for Public Control of Money

 

Hong Kong: Aged and Abandoned

Hong Kong: Aged and Abandoned

Al Jazeera (2016)

Film Review

This shocking Al Jazeera documentary concerns Hong Kong’s 500,000 elderly residents who live in abject poverty in a city with 65 billionaires.

At present, Hong Kong seniors can’t qualify to receive a pension unless their adult children sign a document affirming their inability to look after them. Many refuse to sign out of shame for their failure to provide for their parents.

Hong Kong elders who qualify for pensions find $100 a month totally inadequate to meet their basic needs. Thus they supplement their income by scavenging rubbish bins for cardboard and items they can hawk at street markets.

Many live in so-called “coffin homes” – in warehouses of large beds stacked on top of one another.

Tienanmen Square: The First Occupy Protest

It Happened in Tienamen Square

Al Jazeera (2009)

Film Review

What I found most remarkable about this documentary is the strong similarity between the Tienanmen Square protests and Occupy Wall Street. The Tienanmen Square protest appears to have started spontaneously in mid-May 1989, with students camping out in the square. They weren’t calling for change in the way China was governed – their pro-democracy demands were strictly limited to more control over their own lives. (ie human rights).

Following Chairman Mao’s death in 1976, the Chinese economy had undergone massive reform, with a shift away from strict government controlled industry to capitalist entrepreneurship dependent on western investment.

The Chinese government initially tried to suppress the protest by denouncing it in the media as “unsocialist.” This tactic backfired as hundreds of thousands of Beijing workers joined the students. In the last two Sundays in May, over one tenth of Beijing’s 10 million population turned out in Tienanmen Square.

What I find most amazing about this historic protest is that protesters refused to disperse even after the Red Army rolled in with their tanks and armored personnel carriers and began firing on them. It would take the army approximately 12 hours to clear the square. For me the most surprising footage is of injured protestors being rushed out in ambulances and pedicabs during the 12-hour confrontation.

In all 241 people (including solders) were killed in Tienanmen Square. Another 7,000 were injured.

 

Gamechanger: China’s New Silk Road

 

China’s New Silk Road

DW (2018)

Film Review

This is a German documentary (in English) about China’s Silk Road* projects, commenced in 2013 based on an agreement between Chinese president Xi Jinping and Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev. The Silk Road will consist of a network of superhighways and high speed trains connecting China to western Europe via Kazakhstan and Russia.

In China, the Silk Road begins at Chongqing, a western city of 30 million dubbed the Chinese Silicon Valley for computer hardware. At present, Europe imports most of their computers from China. At present, it takes them four months to reach China by sea. With the completion of the overland Silk Road network, this time could be reduced to a month or less. Shipping goods overland also enables Chinese companies to avoid growing tensions with the US in the South China Sea.

The Kazakh leg of the Silk Road, which is being funded by World Bank and Chinese loans, runs past the Kazakh oil fields – with China importing much of its oil from Kazakhstan.

In China, the Silk Road superhighway network runs alongside the Gobi Desert, where China’s largest solar and wind farms are located.

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*The Silk Road was a centuries-old trade route connecting Asia with Europe. China has invested billions of dollars in building superhighways and high speed networks along the Silk Road route through Kazakhstan and Russia.