Routledge Research in Art and Politics Socially Engaged Art in

Contemporary China
Voices from Below

Meiqin Wang
Routledge Research in Art and Politics is a new series focusing on politics and govern-
ment as examined by scholars working in the fields of art history and visual studies.
Proposals for monographs and edited collections on this topic are welcomed.

Constructing the Memory of War in Visual Culture since 1914

The Eye on War
Edited by Ann Murray

Contemporary Citizenship, Art, and Visual Culture

Making and Being Made
Edited by Corey Dzenko and Theresa Avila

Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary China

Voices from Below
Meiqin Wang

The Danish Avant-Garde and World War IT

The Helhesten Collective
Kerry Greaves

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wang, Meiqin, 1974- author.
Title: Socially engaged art in contemporary China: voices from below I Meiqin
Wang.
Description: New York: Routledge, 2019. 1Series: Routledge research in art and
politics 1Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 20180500511 ISBN 9781138314344 (hardback: alk. paper) 1
ISBN 9780429457074 (ebook : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Art and social action-China-History-21st century. 1Arts and
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52 Art and Social Criticism
100 Artron, "Wang Nanming Takes over as Director of Shanghai Himalayas Art Museum,"
May 17,2017, http://news.artron.netl20170517/n931346.html, accessed May 20 2017. 2 Waste, Pollution, and
101 Ibid. '
102 Wang Nanming, "Personal Statement," China Cultural Daily Art Weekly, no. 7898 (Novem- Environmental Activism
ber 19, 2017): 2.
103 Wang Chunjie, "The Origin and Development of Humanistic Nature and Society Exhibi-
tion," China Art Weekly, February 6, 2017.
Wang Jiuliang and the Power
104 M:ng Fanliang, ~"Humanistic Natur~, and Society: General Theory and Related Top- of Documenting"
ICS Forum Held in Peking University, https:llkknews.cdculture/xzj439g.html, accessed
June 20, 2017.

Problematizing Urban Waste Production

In 2010, the Beijing Songzhuang Art Museum organized a large-scale solo exhibition
titled "Beijing Besieged by Waste: The Observations from Wang Jiuliang," showcas-
ing works by the Shandong-born and Beijing-based photographer Wang Jiuliang (b.
1976). In the exhibition, Wang presented two enormous installation works made of
plastic packages of various snacks and disposable slippers dumped by Beijing's Capital
Airport and a five-star hotel (Figure 2.1). It also featured more than 130 photographs
of disheartening visual content portraying the impact of urban waste on the natu-
ral environment land human beings. These photos came from Wang's ongoing social
documentary project that he began in late 2008 aiming to locate dumpsites for urban
waste produced in Beijing. The overall intention of the project, as Wang states in a
news report, is to "let more people see the landfills surrounding US."1 Although seeing
does not automatically entail action and change, being aware of problems, as geogra-
pher Max D. Woodworth insists, can work on people's consciousness so as they can
be mobilized into seeking solutions or putting up resistance.'
Wang's effort is of particular significance in China since the municipal government
does not make public the locations of dumpsites, and ordinary urban residents have
no access to such data-meaning they are excluded from knowing or thinking about
such issues. Commenting on Wang's exhibition, art curator Bao Kun asserts: "The
waste that Wang Jiuliang shoots is the product of modern urbanization. Infinite wastes
have accompanied the endless desires and the earth is entering an era of waste." He
continues: "The problem with landfills surrounding Beijing is a severe warning for
other Chinese cities that are now plunging into consumerism and reckless develop-
ment.":' He surely is getting to the point.
Wang, born in a rural village in Linghe town Shandong province, is a graduate
of the Cinema-Television School at Communication University of China in Beijing,
where he studied from 2003 to 2007. His critical reflection of the waste problem only
began in summer 2008 when he visited his rural hometown for a photographic project
on Chinese folk religions. As he recalls:

I needed to find particularly clean natural environments to use as backgrounds

for the photographs. But such places are hard to find now. Everywhere, covered
by plastic tarps, there is the so-called modern agriculture, which has produced
a countless number of discarded pesticide and chemical fertilizer packages scat-
tered across the fields, ditches, and ponds. Herbicides and pesticides together have
 Waste, Pollution, and Environment Activism 55
54 Art and Social Criticism
were never made public; and, despite protests from residents living nearby, they con-
tinued to expand. More shocking, however, was his discovery of many illegal landfills
and a whole industry of underground garbage operation.
Wang's working method of locating these illegal dumpsites was simple but time-
consuming. He followed suspicious-looking garbage trucks with his motorcycle and
found the first few dumpsites. Then, "I carefully studied the visual characteristics of
these garbage dump sites and used this information to find similar sites on satellite
photographs of greater Beijing, marking every location that might be a potential dump
site.:" He then went to each of the marked locations to confirm their status. Using
this method, he identified illegal dumpsites one after another between Beijing's Fifth
and Sixth Ring Roads. Wang's actual shooting of these particular sites, however, was
far from easy. Given the nature of such illegal landfills, where people involved tried
to keep their trade clandestine, reporters from state-sanctioned news media would
have a hard time carrying out the task, let alone an individual artist motivated by his
own sense of mission to document the journey of urban waste and understand the
waste management. Wang was often refused entrance, berated, chased by dogs, or
threatened, such as: "If you come again, we will bury you in the pit."? He also had the
experience of being kept hostage and his photographs deleted from cameras. Aspiring
to reveal the truth, Wang did not give up despite all the obstacles. Instead, he came up
with creative solutions: .
L
Sometimes I pretended that I was there to repurpose garbage and looked for
opportunities to take pictures when I was granted entrance. More often than not,
1engaged in a kind of guerrilla warfare with the guards, quickly shooting pictures
Figure 2.1 Exhibition view of "Beijing Besieged by Waste," Songzhuang Art Museum, 2010.
and leaving when they were not paying attention. 1 also looked for commanding
Photos taken by the author.
heights, such as treetops, or high-voltage electricity poles, where 1could take pic-
tures that captured the entirety of a site including its surroundings."
transformed the once-fertile natural environment into a lifeless one, and the rap-
He also talked to scavengers working at the dumpsites whenever opportunities rose,
idly developing consumerist lifestyle of the villagers has filled the village with piles
and photographed them at work up close and from afar. Wang's personal guerrilla
of nondegradable garbage. The clean and beautiful hometown of my childhood
warfare with dumpsites yielded, by the end of 2010, more than 10,000 photographs
memories-only a decade or two old-is nowhere to be found."
and over 60 hours of video footage. Probably due to the high vantage point he often
This distressing experience propelled him to start investigating the waste-related pol- had to shoot from, his images are able to present not only the squalid and chaotic
lution as the content of his research-oriented artistic practice since he wanted to fig- details of the dumpsites but also their relationship with the surrounding natural envi-
ronment and the people who lived nearby or on these dumpsites, which gives his work
ure out what had caused such environmental degeneration even in a place as remote
as his hometown. He started by trying to find answers to a question that would seem an affective humanistic value. The human dimension is indeed what makes Wang's
work especially touching, despite the hellish world presented. Wang said: "I have great
too mundane and irrelevant for artists to ask: where did the waste go?
Wang began his research in Beijing, his current home and the power seat of respect for these scavengers. Although they are in an ancient and humble trade, deep
decision-making that has transformed China into the condition that he encountered in their hearts they harbor the hope and dream of a better life."? He managed to live
in his hometown. Having no access to official data, on his motorbike he followed at a large construction dump site for three months himself, and observed more than
garbage collection trucks leaving residential compounds in order to find out where the 2,000 migrant workers living in makeshift shacks built from scraps right at the site
waste produced by urban residents in Beijing was shipped to. The result was shock- during its peak time. He recalled:
ing: "I learned, for starters, that there was an enormous refuse landfill site only seven
Women, using hooks, poked around for small objects of value from the waste,
kilometers away from where I live. And, only one kilometer away from that putrid
and men, swinging huge hammers in their hands, smashed concrete blocks to col-
landfill, a large residential compound was under construction."! In the end, he located
lect any steel inside. As the sweat of the adults infused the site, the place was also
several hundred landfill sites scattering around Beijing's close suburbs. A few of them
filled with the laughter and commotion of children playing and running around.?"
were affiliated with the municipal sanitation service agencies, although the locations
56 Art and Social Criticism
Recognizing the complexity of Wang's images of waste, geographer Shih-yang Kao
comments: "Wang Jiuliang's work reveals that trash does not just disturb and destroy;
it shapes identities and creates new social relations."!! These are relations that Wang
wished to expose through his documentary photographs, and the emphasis on the
connection/causal effect between human life and the natural environment became a
core thread in his art and would continue to figure prominently in his future work.
As one of the first Chinese photographers to focus on urban garbage as the subject
matter of his art making, Wang was actually onto a problem that was just about to
raise significant public attention in China. The year 2009 was often described among
the circle of Chinese environmental NGOs as "Year One of the Garbage Era," a
description that responded to the emerging grassroots resistance against landfills and
incinerators built without consent from local neighborhoods.P Wang's photographic
investigation of the waste problem surrounding Beijing received immediate attention
in and outside the art circles, and his ongoing Beijing Besieged by Waste series won
the Outstanding Artist Award at the 2009 Lianzhou International Photo Festival in
Guangzhou.!' In his effort to raise public awareness of the urgency of the problem,
Wang publicly announced that he was giving up the copyright on the series and would
welcome any type of circulation.?" Here it is worth mentioning that it was small pri-
vate funds from Bao Kun (who would later curate Wang's show) and the renowned art
critic Li Xianting (director of Songzhuang Art Museum where the show was staged)
that enabled Wang to begin shooting for this project in 2008.J5 For a young art gradu-
ate who did not have a stable income, the personal support, both monetary and'moral,
from these two established art professionals naturally meant a great deal." Then,
Wang's exposure at the photo festival and the ensuing media report, including one
from the prestigious Xinhua News Agency, greatly helped with the publicity for his
ongoing project and contributed to the public debates on the problem of waste."? All
this undoubtedly facilitated his receipt of much more funding or more awards from
both domestic and foreign agencies, which allowed him to complete the shooting and
the editing of the video footage into a documentary film. Moreover, the support and
recognition would strengthen his confidence in continuing to probe into the problem
of waste and related issues through his camera."
Xi'an photographer Hu Wugong remarked after viewing Wang's show in Song-
zhuang Art Museum: "I did not expect that Beijing suburbs are also surrounded and
eroded by garbage. One can easily imagine that other cities in China are also like
this. This is an appalling truth. "19 Wang's discovery indeed reminds us of the striking
increase in waste generated by cities, a direct byproduct of the country's continuous
and reckless nationwide urbanization and its promotion of consumption-oriented life-
styles. It was reported in 2005 that China had already surpassed the US as the world's
largest municipal solid waste generator; and, according to predictions, Chinese cities
will accelerate annual solid waste production from approximately 190 million tons in
2004 to over 480 million tons in 2030.20 Dominated by the ideology of consumerism,
accompanied by rapid urban expansion and increasing affluence, Chinese cities have
generated ever more waste in various forms such as everyday garbage and trash, elec-
tronic and industrial rubbish, or construction and demolition debris.
The exponential increase in waste production is now recognized as a growing threat
to public health and the environment in China. As the continuous growth of the Chi-
nese economy has brought about a general material abundance to Chinese society
and the majority of urbanites have become increasingly accustomed to a throwaway
Waste, Pollution, and Environment Activism 57
lifestyle, urban waste is now a serious environmental and social problem, recognized
by academics and the public media alike in China in recent years." As observed by
Shih-yang Kao, environmentalists in China have begun to realize that the task of
waste reduction and recycling must start in the cities, and, for the first time, the urban
middle class has become a subject of scrutiny in China's environmental activism."
With the acceleration of Chinese urbanization, cities expand rapidly and the waste
they produce on a daily basis increases in proportion. The problem was even acknowl-
edged by the national television broadcaster China Central TY (CCTY) in 2013: "On
the heels of rapid urbanization in China ... is massive waste. "23 The waste is filling
up available landfill sites, the major method of waste disposal in China, at a striking
rate and "the problem is getting closer an d c Ioser to d owntown areas. "24 ThiIS warmng
.
from the mainstream media attests to the urgency of the issue so that even the mouth-
piece of the state is willing to report frankly on the gravity of the problem.
Waste and Contemporary Chinese Art2S
Inevitably, as an unavoidable sight in and outside Chinese cities, waste has also entered
into the work of many critically minded contemporary Chinese artists. Besides envi-
ronmentalists, some artists are ,among the first urbanites in China to assume a critical
view of the alarming urban waste accumulation from cities. In their work, they have
brought the problem into the exhibition hall of art museums and galleries and other
public venues to raise social awareness and to stimulate public discussion.
Starting in 2005, Jiangsu-born multimedia artist Han Bing (b. 1974) began using
waste as his object of aesthetic contemplation while exposing a serious problem related
to Chinese urbanization-the industrial-waste and rubbish-ridden rivers. He was par-
ticularly drawn to the appallingly visible contamination of above-ground water in
Beijing as a result of the mindless and irresponsible discarding of everyday trash,
and this became the content of his multiple-year photographic series Urban Amber.
A representative piece from the series is Red Flags Flying on Skylines Cranes (2006),
which presents a bluish-green body of water where one sees water lilies and fallen
leaf-like objects floating above the reflection of a forest of construction cranes with
red flags flying over. At first glance, the image looks exquisite, giving the illusion of an
attractive water surface covered by foliage and animated by swimming fish beneath.
Looking closely, however, one would realize that all kinds of waste such as garbage
bags, plastic bottles, and human sewage make up the water's surface. The bluish-green
color itself is the result of the water being heavily polluted by putrid rubbish and
masses of algae. In other pieces from the series, we see reflections of various man-made
structures such as glamorous skyscrapers and new residential complexes for the rich;
shanty dwellings for the urban poor, migrants, and peasants; and commercial estab-
lishments and advertising billboards-all indistinguishably shrouded under a body of
water infested with filthy rubbish.
In this conceptual work, Han took photos of many heavily polluted bodies of water
in Beijing and produced single-exposure images without any modification other than
simply turning them upside down. However, it is with such a witty and perceptive
reversal that the industrial waste and rubbish conveniently thrown away by people
into rivers, canals, or ponds have returned, taking up the position of the sky in Han's
landscape-like photos. Beijing is but one of the many cities that have become laden
with water pollution, a nationwide problem accompanying China's environmentally
58 Art and Social Criticism
destructive advancement into an economic superpower and an ultra-urban nation.
In this series, Han brings to the forefront a paradoxical result of modernization and
industrialization while revealing one prominent downside of Chinese urbanization.
Chinese cities have built higher and higher structures to house the dreams of urban-
ites, as these construction cranes are still doing in Han's photos. Simultaneously, the
modernized urban lifestyle that centers on material consumption and convenient liv-
ing has produced ever dirtier and stinkier rivers, ponds, and lakes. Han's seemingly
charming portrayals of garbage-infested rivers function like amber, well put by art
critic Maya K6vskaya as "capturing the sediment of an age, and reflecting the dark
side of dreams of modernization. "26
The abundance of waste has also stimulated recycling efforts among certain art-
ists in conceiving their art projects. Beijing-based artist Wang Zhiyuan (b. 1958) has
been creating monumental installation works consisting entirely of urban waste in his
critique of the "wastefulness" of contemporary urban life, which he defines as "life
without social morality-everyone seeks pleasure through purchasing and posses-
sions.":" His 36-foot tall installation piece Thrown to the Wind (2010) was inspired
by the common phenomenon of litter and pollution he sees in Beijing. He rendered
thousands of pieces of discarded plastic bottles and containers into the shape of a
vertical swirling tornado reaching into the sky, metaphorically reminding viewers that
the trash being thrown away does not simply disappear-it may come back like a
devastating tornado.
Xu Bing (b. 1955), the internationally acclaimed artist, completed a massive instal-
lation work entitled Phoenix Project in 2010 that caused controversy even during its
making." It consists of two mammoth sculptures, one 100 feet long and the other
90 feet long, in the shape of the Chinese phoenix. The romantic and legendary conno-
tations of this creature, however, are put in a strong contrast with the hard reality that
contributed to its creation, since the two mythical birds are made entirely of construc-
tion waste and tools that Xu managed to recycle from construction sites in Beijing.
This work directly engages with the mainstream social discourse in contemporary
China, consumption-oriented urban development. Xu began this work in early 2008
when he was invited to create a piece of public art for the atrium of the World Finan-
cial Center in Beijing, which was then under construction. Upon visiting the future
Financial Center, he was shocked by the primitive working conditions of migrant
laborers at the construction site, which posed a striking contrast with the ultra-
modern lifestyle that the extravagant building was meant to symbolize." In response,
he decided to construct two large phoenixes by recycling materials right from the very
construction site and hiring migrant workers for the project. The work thus intended
to draw attention to both the workers who built the phoenixes and the demolition of
numerous old neighborhoods, along with the displacement of their original inhabit-
ants, and the construction of new urban structures such as the World Financial Center
that were regarded as more suitable for Beijing's metropolitan image.
This was an unusual time, just a few months before the global financial crisis would
take its toll. It was also the time when the Beijing government implemented tighter con-
trol over cultural production of the city to insure an ordered and harmonious image of
Beijing and China for the international audience in anticipation of the upcoming sum-
mer Olympics. Xu's work became controversial because it appeared to challenge "the
gentrification and perceived cleansing of society that the government was engaged
in."30 Eventually, the building's developers withdrew their financial support for the
Waste, Pollution, and Environment Activism 59
work, due to financial constraints, and probably also out of concern over the poten-
tially controversial meaning that the birds might convey to the Chinese authorities."
Xu managed to continue on his own and, with materials collected and purchased from
construction sites across Beijing, he completed the Phoenix Project in 2010. The grand
scale, the raw appearance, and the process of making the work that was very much
modeled on Beijing's urban redevelopment won the Phoenix Project the reputation of
"an artwork almost too vivid in its resemblance to contemporary China. "32
While some contemporary Chinese artists imbed their social critique by taking
an aestheticizing approach and presenting the unexpected beauty of waste in their
close-up images or repurposing them, others seek to contextualize the presence of
waste and directly depict its impact on social space and human existence. Sichuan
painter Liu Xintao (b. 1968) captures the invasion of trash in urban public space,
specifically the street, in his Collapsing Night, a series of oil paintings that he began
in 2005. In Collapsing Night-Wild Lily, which Liu completed in 2007, the canvas
confronts the viewer with cluttered trash conspicuously taking up the foreground near
a street manhole. Drippings of gray paint are running down from the trash through
the unpainted canvas towards the bottom frame, adding to the messy and dirty feeling
associated with garbage. Amid the scattered trash of both identifiable and unrecogniz-
able objects, some white lilies emerge with blossoming flowers. They, however, are
rotting like other trash surrounding them, with white drips falling from the petals.
Right above and behind the rotten flowers are the upper bodies of a hugging couple,
one of whom is topless while the other's condition is ambiguous. Their situa tion looks
like they have just been abruptly transferred into this awful environment. The love
between humans is exposed in the littered street and acquires an incongruous nature.
Behind these disconcerting foreground and middle-ground scenes that dominate
most of the canvas is a normal street view of a city with a wide paved road receding
dramatically into the distance, submerging in a well-lit area at the end. Rendered in
a dramatic foreshortening fashion, the two sides of the street are defined by well-
trimmed trees of similar height that are decorated with shining holiday lights, behind
which are the profiles of a few low-rise and high-rise architectural blocks looming
against the foreboding darkness of the night sky. This rational and well-ordered sec-
tion of the cityscape, pushed into a thin slice at the top of the canvas, is in noticeable
contrast with the irrational presence of the trash and the hugging pair. Liu describes
his experience of absurdity in real life that inspired this painting series:
I took a walk at the early evening and what I saw were wild dogs barking, rats
scurrying, and stinking garbage piling up here and there. Behind such a messy
environment the profile of a thriving city suddenly appeared in distance with its
shining and intoxicating neon lights. It was an extremely absurd and even horrific
scene."
The downright absurdity and contrast that characterize Liu's compositions are
thus a realistic representation of the uneven processes of Chinese urbanization that
allow some cities to grow into shining global metropolises while others are made to
pay the price in economic and environmental terms. Moreover, the dominance of the
trash in the composition hints at the wasteful lifestyle promoted in an increasingly
consumption-oriented urban culture. A rising urban middle class who benefit from
China's economic reforms are accustomed to a lifestyle that over-consumes, both in
60 Art and Social Criticism
food and in things, and throws away leftovers and the unwanted without a care. The
unsightly appearance of trash in the middle of the street also points to the way con-
temporary Chinese urbanites treat or abuse the public space. Since the 1990s, as art
historian Wu Hung comments, there has been a strong contrast between the care with
which Chinese urbanites attend to their private space and their total disregard of what
they consider public space." This contrast, I argue, reflects a general decline of social
conscience and sense of responsibility among the Chinese population. The source of
this problem, one may argue, is the coming dominance of self-interested material-
ism and consumption-driven culture, which lacks the effect of moral restraints as the
traditional Confucian ethos or Communist ideology used to have on Chinese citizens.
Essentially, it is a reflection of the lack of their active participation in the public space,
a problem attributable to the authoritarian approach of urban governance that denies
the right of ordinary citizens to participate in the development and transformation of
their cities.
The above works exemplify the growing recognition among contemporary Chi-
nese art communities of a major byproduct of China's GDP-driven and urban-focused
consumerist development strategies that has exploded out of proportion in the past
decade. Although adopting different approaches, the artists share their understanding
of waste as an increasingly severe environmental and social problem, and express their
criticism in their art. By incorporating waste, either actual discarded objects or their
visual representation, into their works they bring waste back into the urban space
and confront viewers with a dark and threatening reality that China has ran into
because of its unchecked development and consumerism. Their works problematize
the dominant lifestyle and economic mode that are responsible for the uncontrollable
urban waste production, and bring to the public its impact on environment and dis-
franchised social groups.
Beijing Besieged by Waste
Wang Jiuliang's efforts to document dump sites surely partakes in this growing artistic
culture of expressing critical voice towards the production of waste and its environ-
mental and social consequences. What distinguishes him from other artists is that
waste is not just a material or phenomenon that he chooses to focus on. He has dug
deeper into the problem of waste, investigating the economics and politics behind its
production and ill/management with an attempt to find out the source of the problem
and how individuals could do their part to alleviate the problem. Rather than try-
ing to draw viewers' attention to how he made photographs as aesthetic objects, he
aspired to appeal to the public for collective awareness and action through his direct
and down-to-earth documentary images. He recalled that he came to realize that what
he was photographing was a social problem, and accordingly making art became less
important to him than solving the problem." For him, photographic images function
to illustrate the otherwise rather abstract statistics about waste production and reveal
the severity of the problem, both of which are not made available to Chinese citizens.
They become his "tool for social intervention.Y" Here, his perception of the role of
art is similar to that of Wang Nanming in his assertion that art should function as a
form of social supervision."
Wang Jiuliang's effort in documenting waste mismanagement in Beijing stimulated
not only public debates but also immediate social impacts. Following widespread
Waste, Pollution, and Environment Activism 61
media reports on his photographic work Beijing Besieged by Waste, particularly soon
after the in-depth coverage from the Xinhua News Agency in early 2010, the Beijing
municipal government designed a plan that aimed to invest in about 1.5 billion US
dollars to clean up and regulate about 1000 dumpsites surrounding Beijing." It is rea-
sonable to believe that Premier Wen Jiabao's involvement played a major role in the
municipal government's swift action." Another high-ranking official took more than
70 colleagues to visit Wang's exhibition in Songzhuang Art Museum, and ordered
many copies of the exhibition catalog to be widely distributed among various official
agencies."
In early 2012, "city besieged by waste," the direct English translation of the Chinese
name of Wang's photographic series, became a popular term that grabbed national
attention and was openly discussed when the Chinese National People's Congress and
the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference were in session." By the end
of 2013, Wang was happy to discover that about 80 percent of illegal dumpsites had
been cleaned Up.42A state news report in 2017 again singled out Wang's work as the
stimulant for rising public attention of the harmful impact of waste mismanagement,
and acknowledged that "city besieged by waste" had become part of popular public
vocabulary in China since 2010.43 Consequently, many related issues that have con-
tributed to waste production, such as excessive packaging, were also under scrutiny
and public critique. 44
In 2011, after more than two years' work and travelling about 9300 miles on his
motorbike, Wan'g'marked on Google Maps more than 500 dumpsites surrounding Bei-
jing that he personally visited and identified (Figure 2.2). As a sign of the completion
of three years' photographing and filming, he directed and released his first documen-
tary, also entitled Beijing Besieged by Waste, which provides a striking summary of
his discoveries in the hitherto not seen or known dirty backyards of Beijing. The film
combines photographs and video footage of many large dumpsites on the outskirts
of Beijing and his observational visits to and conversations with scavengers, mostly
migrant workers from the countryside, who live by and on the dumps (Figure 2.3).
In Mandarin with English subtitles, this 72-minute video narrates Beijing's distressing
cycle of consumption, the ill-managed and often illegally operated trade of waste after
being collected from the urban districts. It highlights the appalling destruction to the
environment-including rivers, soil, and air due to improper waste treatment; the hor-
rific lives lived by scavengers and their children; and government negligence or implicit
collaboration for convenience or profit behind waste-related problems.
Discussing leading Chinese documentaries that address dark consequences of fast-
paced modernization, Chinese Studies scholar Ban Wang considers the approach
adopted by them an "aesthetically powerful strategy" in his emphasis of socially
engaged filmmakers' impulse to cut through the veneer of fantastic lies promoted
by the official media in order to reveal the hidden strata of reality." Wang Jiuliang's
work surely shares this impulse, and his documentary images show nothing less than
powerful aesthetic qualities. In his study of environment- and ecology-related films,
especially documentaries, Film Studies scholar Sheldon Lu adopts the theory of eco-
cinema to emphasize the critical and interventionist tendency among Chinese inde-
pendent filmmakers." He rightly observes that they "share the fundamental impulses
of tackling moral issues, expanding the public sphere beyond state control, adhering
to realist aesthetics and recording truth.":" Wang's documentary was among those
that informed Lu's characterization of Chinese ecocinema, and in particular his notion

Figure 2.2 Wang jiuliang, still from Beijing Besieged by Waste, documentary, 2011.
Figure 2.3 Wang jiuliang, stills from Beijing Besieged by Waste, documentary, 2011.
Waste, Pollution, and Environment Activism 63
of "ugly sublime" when referring to the enormity of unsightly dumping sites captured
by Wang's camera."
Beijing Besieged by Waste perceives the dump sites as a mirror reflecting the crazy
urban expansion of Beijing. It shows that in order to meet the insatiable demand for
construction materials as thousands of new buildings are added to the city's urban
landscape, workers dig deep into mountains and rivers to excavate stone and sand.
Then the numerous pits left behind are used as ready-made landfills where tons of
untreated urban waste are poured to fill them up. Many of these operations, of course,
have been done illegally but nonetheless continuously. Then, as Beijing continues to
push it periphery outwards to accommodate the expansion of its urban population,
new residential complexes are often built right on top of the former landfills, burying
existing waste underneath without proper treatment. Trees would be planted to cover
up the contaminated ground, and real-estate developers would try all means to pre-
vent the truth from being exposed to the public. Wang comments in the film: "It seems
nothing could stop the crazy expansion of the city, or the proliferation of waste."
On the other side of this rapidly growing city, however, is the bleak and abject
existence of thousands of scavengers, who live and try to thrive at the lowest level
of Chinese society by sorting and recycling waste. Wang's film takes us close to the
everyday life and mentality of these people who lived in shabby shelters nearby or
right in the landfill sites. They raised pigs, sheep, and dairy cattle on landfills. Some
built temporary homes with recycled materials found from the demolition rubbish
and furbished them with used furniture from dumpsites. They also found clothes and
sometimes food from waste dumps. Their children found toys that parents would not
be able to afford to bu.y.One of the most heartbreaking scenes in the film shows two
children of scavengers happily playing with dirty toys that they had just found in trash
dumps. While showing the appalling living conditions that these migrant workers are
confined to, Wang does not miss out the hope and resilience embodied by their day-
to-day hard work. These are people who left their hometowns to work on dumpsites
to realize their dream of a better future.
When it comes to how to solve problems associated with waste, many Chinese envi-
ronmentalists and government agencies are calling for implementing garbage recycling
systems, and waste management experts are debating over what technologies and
methods are the best to employ. They seek solutions in advanced technologies and
sophisticated systems of recycling. For Wang, however, it is more important to become
aware of the source of waste generation and to prevent the problems from being ere-
ated." He attributes the rampant consumerism and marketing mentality as primarily
responsible for waste production, and asks in the film: "Do we have to pack a product
to be consumed in seven days in a material that won't disintegrate for 200 years?" It
is a question pointing to a reality in which advertisement plays a powerful role in the
marketplace, and producers tend to dress their goods in attractive yet overly surplus
packaging to entice customers without much concern for the environmental impact.
This obsession with packaging appearance no doubt has contributed to wasteful use
of resources and the accumulation of waste.
Wang's photographs and the documentary related to Beijing's unknown dumpsites,
in their straightforward and minimalist style, expose the truth of a city overshadowed
by waste, a not often seen or discussed dark reality that exists side by side along
with the spectacular rise of Beijing as a "world-class" city populated with glistering
skyscrapers. His work captures, in plain language, the horrendous lives of migrant
workers who try to make a minimal living in the shadow of the economic miracle that
64 Art and Social Criticism
China is known for to the world. Moreover, as Wang observes, the continuous urban
expansion, the growing materialism and consumerism, and the negligence from both
the municipal government and urban residents seem to have pushed Beijing, China's
capital city, to the edge of self-suffocation with the hundreds of landfills forming a
thick belt encircling the city (see Figure 2.2).
In Photography as Activism, Michelle Bogre argues that images produced by pho-
tographers who are driven to change, willingly putting themselves in difficult and
dangerous situations to document problems, are themselves works of activism.l" The
significance of Wang's documentary images can surely be understood in this angle.
Although not assuming an open and confrontational stance of activists like Ai Weiwei
does, Wang's work of "recording truth" inevitably constitutes a form of civic activ-
ism that in turn contributes to an expanding "green public sphere," in environmental
scholars' terms." He therefore works in the same light of "living in truth" as a citizen
artist, partaking in the rising civic consciousness among Chinese intellectuals, since
he shares the desire to bring people closer to the truth of China's problematic social
reality represented by waste production. In a talk given at the University of California,
Berkeley in 2011 on the occasion of his film screening and photo exhibition, Wang
titled it "The Artist as Environmental Activist. "52 It is obvious that he has consciously
embraced the possibility of activism through art in the domain of environmental
protection.
The Dark Reality of Plastic Waste Recycling
Amid the growing environmental activism movement in China as well as the report-
age he already received from the photographic version of Beijing Besieged by Waste,
Wang's documentary of the same name was well received both in the intellectual com-
munities and by the public, and was widely reported. Its premiere in Beijing was so
well attended, exceeding his expectations, that he had to screen it twice and had a
meeting with reporters from more than 40 media outlets afterwards." Much more
media coverage would follow, and in an interview in 2014 Wang mentioned that over
200 domestic and foreign media representatives had reported on his work. 54 The film
was screened in many domestic venues such as commercial theatres, universities, and
professional organizations, and later on the Internet and in international film festivals
as well as universities and institutions outside of China. All these provided him with
many opportunities of exchanges as he traveled to different cities and countries where
he gave talks about his work. During one such occasion, he visited the United States
and had the opportunity to learn how garbage was recycled in this developed country.
At one of the biggest waste recycling companies in Oakland, California, he learnt
that the plastic waste collected there was usually shipped to China. Provoked by this
discovery, Wang decided to find out and document what happened to the imported
plastic waste." That decision marks the beginning of his next documentary, Plastic
China, which looks into the hitherto little-known business of recycling imported plas-
tic waste in China.
In the following years, Wang dedicated himself to researching where the imported
plastic waste went: locating factories processing it, documenting the work and life of
people in the industry, and editing video footage into a film. Not surprisingly, it was
not a pleasant and easy task to begin with, given that the recycling business involved
many illegal or unregulated operations; but Wang persevered, despite numerous
Waste, Pollution, and Environment Activism 65
obstacles and threats from government agencies or owners and workers in the indus-
try. At his first stop, Wen'an county (Hebei province), the largest plastic processing
base in northern China, he discovered thousands of family-run factories in dozens
of rural villages operating an industry that was apparently costly to both the envi-
ronment and human health. The air and nearby rivers were heavily polluted and a
foul smell permeated the area. People worked without much protection as they sifted
through the plastic waste, often with bare hands. Based on the remaining labeling, he
could tell that waste plastics came from many developed countries: the United States,
the United Kingdom, France, Singapore, Australia, etc. He concludes: "It is like [the]
United Nations of garbage and China has become the world's garbage dump. "56 He
is surely not far from the truth. According to a recent UN report, China is currently
the largest e-waste dumping site in the world." Likely, plastic waste is catching up
since it is even cheaper to transport lightweight plastics, and Chinese business people
are known to be willing to pay the highest in getting plastic waste for reprocessing."
Nonetheless, knowing the fact is one thing; witnessing it with one's own eyes makes
a big difference in terms of understanding the gravity of the situation. While recycling
garbage is commonly accepted as a good thing because it supposedly saves resources
and reduces environmental pollution, Wang's discovery seems to suggest that this is
not always the case, at least not with how plastic waste was handled in places he
visited in China. He states: "I'm not against recycling plastic waste, I'm all for it. "59
However, he is adamantly against the kind of raw method of recycling that produces
more pollution; and his documentary is an effort to reveal a dark truth behind this
common perception about recycling.
Following his first stop in Hebei, Wang conducted field research in other provinces
across China such as Tianjin, Shandong, Jiangsu, and Guangdong where large-scale
processing bases for imported plastic waste were located. He and his team interviewed
and talked to hundreds of people who were closely related to this industry in order
to understand the whole process. To begin with, the first step is sorting the unsorted
and un-disinfected waste, and workers could find all kinds of materials in the suppos-
edly plastic waste: textiles, rotten food, metal, paper, and even solid waste marked as
hazardous. In order to save costs, he found out, almost all of the sorting was done
manually in China, and many people were injured from the task. Wang was particu-
larly shocked to see children picking up medical syringes from the garbage and play-
ing with them as toys (Figure 2.4).60 Despite the Chinese government's prohibition on
importing medical waste, Wang found piles of waste such as infusion tubing, bags,
and needles from developed countries.
The second step is to crush and wash the plastic. The process of washing involves
massive pollution of above- and underground water. In several dozens of villages that
Wang visited, rivers and ponds were filled with dirty water, and local residents had to
buy drinking water from outside-an imposed economic burden on their already hard
life. The last step is granulating, which is to melt the plastics through heating and then
cutting them into small pieces to get the final product-recycled plastic particles. The
heating process produces noxious fumes. Wang recounts: "When more than 2,000
small factories melt plastics at the same time the whole area is hellish.l"" For him, the
negative impacts of the plastics recycling industry on local people and the environ-
ment are beyond description (Figure 2.5). He also notes that, since not all the garbage
can be recycled, the recycling industry is producing secondary waste and contributing
to scenes similar to those captured in his Beijing Besieged by Waste.

Figure 2.4 Wang jiuliang, still from Plastic China, documentary, media version, 2014.
Figure 2.5 Wang jiuliang, stills from Plastic China, documentary, 2016.
Waste, Pollution, and Environment Activism 67
For the actual shooting, Wang focused on a small rural town in Shandong, his
home province. In this town, whose economy has come to rely heavily on process-
ing imported plastic waste, Wang spent multiple years following closely two families
involved in the business. One family is headed by Kun, a local and the owner of a
small household-recycling workshop who lived with his wife, their single son, and his
elderly parents. The other is that of Peng, a migrant from Sichuan province and the
employee who lived right in the compound of the workshop with his wife and chil-
dren. Wang even rented a place nearby and stayed there for one and a half years in
order to observe the families on a daily basis. He befriended the families, chatting with
them, eating together, and sometimes helping them with the work.f And, of course, he
documented with his camera their labor, aspirations, and everyday lives as well as the
impact of the recycling industry on the local environment and community.
A final product of Wang Jiuliang's multiple-year intensive research and empa-
thetic observation is the release of his 82-minute documentary Plastic China in 2016,
although a media version of about 26 minutes was released much earlier following the
completion of his actual shooting in late 2014.63 Departing from his first documentary,
which focuses on the physicality of dumpsites, Plastic China centers on human drama
or non-drama against the backdrop of ever-expanding garbagescapes, this time mainly
consisted of plastic waste. The film explores this thriving yet devastating industry on
a personal level through a focused presentation of the lives and work of the local boss
Kun (a hardworking man), the employee Peng (an alcoholic), and Peng's eldest but
still preteen daughter Yi Jie. Like thousands of other people involved in the business,
Kun and Peng and their families try to make a living in a tough business that only
provides minimal income but apparently impairs their health and pollutes the air, soil,
and water. •
Pollution, Inequality, and the Trap of Consumerism
The scenes Wang documented are often raw and distressing, such as Yi Jie (the daugh-
ter) cleaning her face with water used for washing the plastic waste; flies perching on
the face of her baby brother who is carried on the back of his working mother; or the
mother and children picking up dead fish in a contaminated river for a family meal
(Figure 2.6). Bleak moments like these are numerous; so are scenes with people work-
ing hard in the unprotected environment against a backdrop of contaminated rivers,
smoking sky, and mountain-high plastic heaps that constitute the typical setting of
their existence.
Wang's observational and dialogical participation, albeit off screen, allowed him to
learn about these families' past and present lives as well as their aspirations. The fami-
lies apparently have accepted his presence as part of their daily routine, so they frankly
share their desires or complaints with Wang. For example, the boss Kun wishes to buy
a car to show off his success, and complains about the marginal profits he is earning
because of excessive government taxation on the business. Yi Jie, who was brought
here by Peng when she was seven and helps take care of her young siblings besides
working as child labor, wishes to go to school one day-a promise made by her father
long ago but not yet fulfilled-and complains about his drinking problem.
The unassuming minimalistic style that brings the audience close to heaps of plastic
waste also draws them to the everyday interactions among these individuals. Although
Wang's camera lens is straightforwardly fact-showing and his portrayal of these
68 Art and Social Criticism
Figure 2.6 Wang liujiang, stills from Plastic China, documentary, 2016.
industrious people is sensitive and non-judgmental, the documentary embeds multiple
critiques in its non-dramatic unfolding of narrative. To begin with, the word "plastic"
in the title has a double meaning: "first it refers to the plastic waste, but at a deeper
level it refers to the weakness beneath our surface prosperity; the way plastic surgery
only improves appearance, not the reality."64 Wang continues:
Years of rapid growth have made China appear prosperous, but pollution is hav-
ing a huge impact on health. If your life is at risk, what use is earning money?
Smog, water pollution, soil pollution ... while China's growth appears incredible,
it is actually cheap and fragile."
Cheap and fragile are also the labors from the underclass and the environment
affected by the business. China's attainment of great prosperity in the past three dec-
ades is a topic of interest worldwide. However, as Wang shows, the human and envi-
ronmental cost of this prosperity is devastating and deserves greater attention. So is
the vicious injustice in contemporary China that propels these people risking their
lives in making a living at this extremely hazardous recycling plant, one of the several
thousands in this region with similar conditions, and children of migrants such as Yi
Jie deprived of their right to receive education in public schools where their parents
work." The section on a gaudy car show in a nearby city and on some famous tour-
ist destinations that Kun visited in Beijing temporarily takes viewers away from the
gloomy underworld of plastic scraps, but only to remind them of the striking contrast
between the well-ordered, brilliant urban space and the chaotic and treacherous space
inhabited by these unlucky ones. The official slogan "All the people will have a well-
off life!" hanging around the city stands out as particularly acerbic due to its utterly
Waste, Pollution, and Environment Activism 69
incongruous nature in a society that has already shed its former legacy of egalitarian-
ism and openly embraced inequalities as the new socioeconomic norms. Zooming in
on these empty words, Wang apparently casts his sarcastic commentary, a message
well received by his audience. One film reviewer perceptively writes that with the slo-
gan, "the dark irony of Wang's title has become apparent, the 'plasticity' of Chinese
society only applicable to those at the very top of the vast, precarious pile."67 Another
reviewer sees the slogan as "a bitterly ironic final note to the film's poignant reflections
on the realities and inequalities of a post-Mao China. "68
On the other hand, handsome profits go to people engaged, both legally and ille-
gally, in the international trade in plastic waste." It is not difficult for viewers to
detect that the inequalities are not just produced within China, but are also part of
the operation of international trade. Wang puts it this way: "China is the world's big-
gest manufacturer of cheap goods; it's the 'factory of the world'. When those goods
are shipped overseas, what goes with them? Resources and energy. What gets left in
China? Pollution. "70 After visiting many recycling plants in developed countries in
order to learn how they sort plastic waste, Wang became disappointed: "Developed
nations export their waste to other countries, but China can't copy them. What will
humanity do when it runs out of places to send waste?"?' He added:
Consumerism is even worse there than in China and they produce much more
waste. So in that sense, what are we meant to learn from them? The reason their
cities are cl~aner is because they have better political and economic policies to
conceal the waste-one of which is to export it. Why do they want to export it?
Because recycling itis too expensive.i?
In China, on the contrary, it appears much cheaper to process plastic waste because
of the availability of cheap labor, if/since human health and environmental degradation
are not factored into the equation. The downplay of human and environmental costs
is indeed an unfortunate but major issue that contributes to China's ever-worsening
ecological system, even with its much-acclaimed renewable or green energy technol-
ogy. China has recently emerged as the world's leader in solar energy production, with
huge sums of money invested in the technology." However, China's competitiveness
in becoming the world's leading producer of solar panels is achieved by "dumping
the toxic waste in rural areas on helpless village communities" and saving money on
pollution recovery processes." In economic historian Richard Smith's words, under
China's Communist-capitalist economic system, the green industry rapidly grows and
expands, greatly enriching a few but at the expense of horrific destruction of the lives
of many." This is a little-known dark irony of the so-called green solution.
Back to Wang's documentary: although the title has China in it, the problem Wang
wants to reveal certainly goes beyond, and the film is targeting international com-
munities. It challenges the complacent idea that recycling garbage necessarily saves
resources and reduces environmental pollution since his findings show that plastic
recycling in China involves consuming more resources and creating severe secondary
pollution, resulting in disproportionate profit and cost ratio. Since plastics do not
degrade, the only way, as Wang sees it, is to mobilize people worldwide to reduce using
them." Reducing use entails buying less and accordingly producing less, an approach
that goes against the capitalist economic system built upon the logic of perpetual
growth. This, however, might be an approach to effectively eradicate environmental
70 Art and Social Criticism
problems for humanity, with its focus on the source rather than the syndrome, as
advocated by Richard Smith in his argument that the systemic problems of capitalism
should be dealt with if global ecological collapse is to be avoided."
An important theme the documentary captures, which is also a critique central to
Wang's works, is the devouring force of consumerism and irrational obsession with
the material-oriented notion of the good life that seems to affect everyone, even those
working in a dirty business at the bottom of social strata. The storyline of the docu-
mentary shows that the boss Kun works day and night, ignoring the physical and men-
tal health problems of his own family and himself in order to save for a sedan car since
other factory owners in the village all own nice cars. His immediate excitement when
touching and sitting in a car beyond his means at a motor show is a catching scene of
the triumph as well as the trap of consumerism. Furthermore, adults complain about
the negative impact of the recycling business on their health and environment, but
nonetheless perceive it as the only way of improving the life quality of their families.
It is a dark and sad reality: people are knowingly sacrificing their health to meet their
quest for the good life, which is now banally equated with money and commodities
that money can buy." In the film, Kun calmly expresses his conviction as if it is the
ultimate truth that nothing stops him from making money.
All these factors constitute a narrative that "lays bare human relations and strips
them naked under the spell of money worship," as aptly presented by Ban Wang in
his analysis of another Chinese documentary. Gravely, this narrative is not fictional
at all, but a recording of reality itself." For director Wang Jiuliang, this unabashed
money worship is a manifestation of a world and an era "trapped by capitalism and
consumption.t"? As he puts it:
We wear something once or twice then discard it-not because it can't be worn,
but because it's out of date. Your mobile phone might last for 10 years, but you
throw it away after two-not because it's broken, but because you want a new
model."
His criticism is surely not off target. The whole world is trapped deeper and tighter in
capitalism and consumption, regardless of whether you are in a developed country or
one that is rapidly catching up like China.
David Harvey pointedly argues that the global economy is currently centered on
growth for the purpose of growth; and endless efforts have been invested in stimulat-
ing the needs, wants, and desires of ordinary consumers in order to satisfy the insa-
tiable demand of capital accumulation." Reflected in the world of production and
distribution of consumer goods, as he sees it, fashion and innovations are called upon
to serve this mission in which planned obsolescence and making things that break
down easily are among such examples that only truly benefit the small extremely
wealthy groups who control capital." According to him, this irrational system is kept
going at the expense of human dignity, among other things: "Human lives are dis-
rupted and even physically destroyed, whole careers and lifetime achievements are
put in jeopardy, deeply held beliefs are challenged, psyches wounded and respect for
human dignity is cast aside.":" Harvey's description-"that so many people in the
world live in conditions of abject poverty, that environmental degradations are spi-
raling out of control, that human dignities are everywhere being offended even as
the rich are piling up more and more wealth"-finds pointed illustrations in Wang
Waste, Pollution, and Environment Activism 71
Jiuliang's documentary." Reflected in the world of garbage, a core message Wang's
work conveys is that countries and people at the bottom of this vicious cycle of capital
accumulation will only find themselves surrounded by more and more garbage unless
the desire for excessive consumption promoted by the logic of consumerist capitalism
can be curbed or challenged."
Censorship of Civic Activism
Backed by CNEX Studio Corporation, a Hong Kong non-profit foundation dedicated
to the production and promotion of Chinese documentary films, Plastic China has
entered many international film festivals in Europe and North America. Following
its premiere and award winning at the 2016 Amsterdam International Documentary
Film Festival (IDFA), a major event in the world of documentaries, it has continued
to receive awards or honorary mentions." At each of its screenings there were always
audiences who were shocked by the horrendous scenes recorded in the documentary,
and who said they were going to reflect upon their lifestyle, especially when it comes
to plastics." In addition to enthusiastic audience responses during the screenings, its
plain but powerful imagery and the stark problems exposed also won many favorable
reviews.f" Within China, the documentary attracted exuberant attention and was dis-
cussed widely in both print and Internet media following its premiere at the IDFA. It
was an immediate hit when it became available on the web in China, and scored 9.5
out of 10 at Douban.corn, one of China's most influential Web 2.0 social networking
service websites." All seemed to go very well, following Wang's tactic of harnessing
public media support to justify his effort of a citizen's private investigation of waste-
related problems." The strategy succeeded in providing a protective shield for his
Beijing Besieged by Waste series, which allowed its wide circulation among Chinese
people and stimulated positive policy changes. Unfortunately, it did not work con-
tinuously this time as the censorship on Plastic China kicked in unexpectedly in early
2017, not long after it became available on the web in China.
Although targeting global audiences with the hope of raising global awareness,
Wang hoped that the Chinese government would step in, following favorable media
coverage, to tackle problems raised in Plastic China just like what happened after
his previous photography work and documentary on Beijing's illegal dumpsites were
released. However, to his great surprise and dismay, on January 8,2017 the film and
all reviews and comments on it disappeared from websites in China, without any rea-
son provided." The Chinese characters of Plastic China suddenly became a sensitive
phrase, and content associated with the documentary was being removed from their
original webpages. Given the huge population of netizens in China, which reached
668 million in mid-201S, this censorship effectively reduced the circulation of this
documentary in the country, particularly among younger generations who are the
major users of the Internet."
Hidden from circulation is also the disheartening life of people working at the bot-
tom of the plastics recycling industry, the devastating destruction of the environment,
and the shocking negligence of local governments. Vanishing even earlier, four days
after its publication, was a video entitled 20 Photos of the Land of China, which
recorded a 20-minute talk given by Wang in Beijing on December 22,2016 on Yixi, a
public forum similar to TED Talks." In it, Wang discusses a new documentary project
he initiated in 2015 themed on the massive man-made destruction of vast lands with
72 Art and Social Criticism
20 shocking photos showing environmental disasters brought about by indiscriminate
quarrying, an industry that expands in tandem with Chinese urbanization.
The ban on the film must have puzzled Wang because certain clips and photographic
images from it were already circulating in China since late 2014 after he had a press
conference with more than 50 media on this not-yet-completed documentary." Since
then, many more media outlets, including a channel from the prestigious CCTV, made
programs on him and the film, and he accepted a lot of interviews in his desire to pub-
licize the film." He did expect some obstacles to its dissemination, which he supposed
would come from local authorities of those regions filmed in the documentary because
the problems naturally make government officials look bad. This is predictable given
that various local government agencies had already intervened during his shooting.
However, Wang apparently was not prepared for such systematic and nationwide cen-
sorship, which can only be done under the order of the central government. As usual,
no reason was provided. This kind of unpredictable censorship, besides testifying to
the continuous lack of accountability towards citizens in China's authoritarian politi-
cal system, could also be seen as a strategy that encourages self-censorship, which, as
some scholars argue, can effectively discourage people from creating or circulating
content that does not conform to the mainstream ideologies."
Given the fact that the Chinese government does not have to explain why it censors
certain cultural products, we can only speculate on the motivations behind this ban
on Wang's recent work. It might be that the magnitude of problems exposed in Wang's
Plastic China and his new work on the destruction of the land is so daunting t/lat the
government does not want more people to know about and publicly debate them. This
is likely especially due to the fact that both the documentary and the video of his talk
became instant Internet sensations once they were posted." Such sensations bear the
potential of forming collective expression and stimulating public outcry for collective
action, which might alert the authorities. According to recent research, censorship in
China has evolved in the past decade, and now the purpose of it "is not to suppress
criticism of the state or the Communist Party" but to "reduce the probability of collec-
tive action by clipping social ties whenever any collective movements are in evidence
or expected. "99 Therefore, despite the fact that Wang did not direct any scathing criti-
cism at the government, he was censored and his materials, the sources of all these
sensations that might call for a collective movement, were removed.
In addition, the total disappearance of the government regulatory agencies in the
plastics recycling industry as revealed in Plastic China might be another problem
that the government did not want the public to become aware of. In a reflective
essay on the film, economist He Qianliang rightly asks why these pollution-ridden
processes of recycling plastics that produce appallingly visible environmental con-
sequences can go on without any intervention from the state, the very state that can
be ubiquitous in controlling the life of the Chinese people if it wants to.100She notes:
"Small factory owners and practitioners said they didn't want reporters to come, for
fear of being exposed by news media, but almost no one expressed worry about the
intervention of the local state. "101Apparently, there is only one reason explaining
the non-performance of the government and the incompetence of official regulatory
agencies-namely, it has a stake in keeping the industry running: "the 'foreign scrap'
processing industry brings revenue to local governments and regulatory agencies use
regulations as a tax-collecting tool. "102Harvey criticizes the fact that global capital-
ism has rendered the levers of political, institutional, and judicial powers and alike
Waste, Pollution, and Environment Activism 73
"under such tight but dogmatic political control as to be incapable of doing much
more than perpetuating the status quO."103In China, the powerful state is far from
losing control over capitalism; but its political, institutional, and judicial agencies
nonetheless choose to voluntarily maintain the status quo because they are the pri-
mary benefactors of the current Chinese economic system appropriately described by
many scholars as state or communist capitalism.'?" In Wang's documentary, the boss
Kun's complaint of heavy taxation surely confirms that the authority knows very well
the existence of such factories like his and happily collects tax from them despite their
illegal practices. This also explains why various local authorities would try to prevent
Wang from shooting such factories.
The censorship of Wang's environmentally conscious work recalls the fate of an
earlier documentary, Under the Dome, released in 2015 by Chai jing, a former CCTV
journalist who self-financed the whole production. This 103-minute film presents a
wealth of multimedia visual materials such as photos, interview recordings, animated
illustrations, film footage, and infographics illuminating China's catastrophic air pol-
lution problem.l'" The material came from Chai's year-long investigation of China's
ever-worsening air quality, a typical urban problem that has recently been identified
as the fourth leading factor for premature death in cities in China.l'" Her film reveals
the inability of the Ministry of Environmental Protection to enforce environmental
regulations against various interest groups, such as powerful state-owned enterprises
or large private companies, and the widespread violations of carbon emission laws.
The massive faiture of implementing anti-pollution regulations, despite the existence
of many of them, is well resonated in Wang's documentary, Plastic China. As well put
by a reporter discussing Under the Dome, the fundamental problem is not the lack
of regulatory structure, but "the wholesale failure of that structure, in which Chinese
industry, much of it state-owned, disregards regulations, sets its own standards, or
manages to playoff different parts of the bureaucracy against one another,">"
Unfortunately, Under the Dome preceded the exact process of going viral on social
media first, only to be censored afterwards. Within three days of Chai posting the doc-
umentary online it received 200 millions views, causing a national storm as it became
the most discussed topic on China's social media platforms for those days.!" It was
also praised by a few high-ranking officials and posted on state-run media as well as
popular Chinese websites; and several reporters were happily surprised that "despite
the criticism of government policy the video was not blocked."!" The positivism was
misplaced, however, because within a week of its release the film was removed from
all Chinese websites, and discussions and reviews of it disappeared.
Analyzing the significance of the documentary, cinema studies scholar Shuqin Cui
argues: "The irony of the film's initial virality provoking its short-lived circulation
reveals once again the brute fact of media censorship and social political constraints. "110
It was very likely that the sensational public responses alerted the authorities to potential
collective movements coming from watching the film and discussing it; therefore the
censorship was implemented in a style that can only be described as extremely effec-
tive and thorough. In the film, Chai Jing calls for collective action and urges her fel-
low citizens to demand change, which, as reporter Steven Mufson suggests, "is where
she probably crossed one of Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s red lines, embracing an
action generated from below rather than orchestrated from above."!" Regretfully, being
a responsible and proactive citizen is not what is promoted or even allowed in China's
authoritarian political system. People, the subjects, are supposed to be obedient and
74 Art and Social Criticism
patient, quietly waiting for the government to come to their rescue rather than express-
ing their demands for change from the bottom up with their own initiatives.
Likewise, Wang's seemingly harmless goal in making Plastic China, an in-depth
study of how foreign plastic waste is recycled in China, has produced consequences
that the government does not appreciate. In particular, at his talk at Yixi, while show-
ing images of brutal destruction and pollution of vast lands in remote rural regions,
Wang charges his audience: "Why can't we get angry at matters of such severity, why
can't we question the source of problems?"1l2 He urges his audience to make the effort
to protest when things are not right because those in possession of power and capital
are oblivious of the environmental problems, so the changes have to be initiated by
individuals who are outside of the system. Probably, like Chai ling, he stepped over
the red line by urging people to act from grassroots level, resulting in the ban of the
talk. The absurdity of this whole censorship of Wang's recent work is that the central
government actually took in information presented in Plastic China and acted upon it,
as indicated by a report by the Xinhua News Agency.P:' For example, in March 2017,
General Administration of Customs of China issued a report on a special joint action
they had launched in February in nine provinces that are known for smuggling foreign
garbage.'!" Then in April, the topic of foreign waste became the agenda of an impor-
tant central government meeting supervised by President Xi jinping, during which it
passed a proposal banning the import of certain types of foreign waste and reforming
solid waste import managernent.l'!
The Possibility of Public Mobilization and Change
It remains to be seen how well the updated policy will be implemented. As revealed
in Chai ling's documentary, China does not lack laws that appear thoughtful and up
to date. However, it lacks a transparent and effective system that can guarantee the
unprejudiced exercise of judicial power in cases when only the poor and the powerless
are the victims. Without such a system, no matter how perfectly a law or policy might
be written, it is only a feeble text and an empty slogan. Such is the case with the free-
dom of speech and of the press that was written in Article 35 of China's constitution
adopted in 1982 but which has never really been implemented given all the restric-
tions attached to its implementation. Similarly, in Article 33, it is written that "The
State respects and preserves human rights," while in reality the state has never stopped
persecuting and jailing human rights activists.!" The ban on Wang's documentary just
provides a new case, among countless others, of how Article 35 fails in China.
On a sarcastic note, this case is an excellent example of the effectiveness of censor-
ship that the Chinese government can pull off, and one cannot help but wonder what
would happen if this effectiveness were targeted towards problems rather than citizens
who expose problems. For Article 33, Liu Xiaobo-the literary critic and 2010 Nobel
Peace Prize laureate who died of cancer under guard in 2017 while still serving his jail
time because of his work for basic human rights-adds another scandalous case to the
Chinese government's failure in granting its citizens what is written in the constitu-
tion.l'? He was long dispossessed of his freedom of speech and of the press in China.
Even after his death, Liu's name is still banned in the country where he fought hard to
promote individual liberty, and posts on social media commemorating him have been
repeatedly deleted.':" Captured in Wang jiuliang's documentary is also the failure to
protect the basic human right to drink clean water and grow healthy crops for local
Waste, Pollution, and Environment Activism 75
residents who suffer from the pollution imposed upon their living environment by the
recycling industry.
Despite the heightened government censorship, it is also very clear that the Internet
and social media have provided new possibilities for Chinese people to inform and
express themselves, resulting in a rising online activism. In the case of both Chai and
Wang, the sensations brought about by their works were made possible because of the
active online mobilization in which various social media networks and Internet users
functioned as "co-agencies of communication and distribution." 119This demonstrates
the power of eco-docurnentary films which, as Sheldon Lu recognizes, reveal the brute
truth of reality effectively through the candid camera eye and, accordingly, "appeal
to the different faculties of the human mind: cognitive, intellectual, emotional, ethical
and practical." 120Discussing the recent emerging trend of ecocinema in China, Lu
identifies an ethical imperative among filmmakers to "participate in the creation of a
functional civil society, to intervene in the national and global public sphere" in their
effort to resist wasteful consumerism, provide new angles of perceiving the relation-
ship between human society and the planet, and call for public action."121
On the other hand, widespread and voluntary support of Chai and Wang's docu-
mentaries also testifies to Chinese netizens' willingness to participate in online com-
munities to raise broad public awareness and form collective demand for changes
in terms of environmental degradation. Their effort contributes to the growing civic
environmentalism, an important social movement in contemporary China associated
with "voluntary' and self-organized citizen action" in a time when "environmental-
ism has become a new form of collective identity."122 The shared agencies demon-
strated in their online participation are crucial for the expanding green public sphere,
both online and on the ground. As it is generally acknowledged, online activism has
brought about transformative effects for Chinese people to organize themselves and
voice their collective concerns.I" The censorship of Chai and Wang's works following
the online sensations actually illustrates that, at least from the perspective of the gov-
ernment, the threat posed by online environmental activism is real. This indicates that
as long as the Internet is still allowed to function in China, the possibilities of digital
activism for public mobilization either for debate or action are still there and social
change can be fomented along the way.
It is foreseeable that Wang jiuliang might encounter even more obstacles in continu-
ing his current project, tentatively titled The Land, which aims to document massive
environmental destruction due to quarrying. Self-proclaiming to be an optimistic pes-
simist, Wang nonetheless intends to continue his work.!" Like his previous works,
this project also explores the relationship between human desires to consume more
and better goods and environmental degradation and ensuing impacts on the poor
and powerless. It reveals that these disenfranchised social groups are imposed upon
by the unjust cost of profit-driven urbanization and consumerist individualism that
account for much of China's spectacular economic growth. As Wang observes, they
are deprived of what he considers the basics of human rights: "clean air, drinkable
water, and sunny days in winter. "125 These elemental gifts of nature, which have all
along been free for all regardless of wealth and status, are now increasingly presented
as commodities to be possessed through commercial activities such as purchasing
air filters, face masks, and bottled water as well as travelling to areas free of smog
with largely unspoiled natural environments. Unfortunately, all these short-term solu-
tions might spare some sectors of the population from immediate harm but likely will
76 Art and Social Criticism
worsen environmental pollution as a whole. Air filters, face masks, and especially
plastic bottles will add to the environmental burden once they are discarded, while
travelling to underdeveloped locations for better air and nature (whether by plane,
ship, or car) has become a major contributor of air pollution that greatly worsens the
ecology of this planet, as has recently been affirrned.!" It is a deep irony of our time.
Wang Jiuliang thus is looking into a distressing consequence brought about by
China's embrace of capitalist urbanization. Henri Lefebvre discussed long ago the
transformation of natural elements such as air, light, water, and land into commercial
products with exchange value under the condition of capitalist urban planning in
developed countries.F" More recently, David Harvey criticized the rampant activi-
ties of primitive accumulation in developing countries, resulting in the privatization
and commodification of many formerly common property resources such as water+"
China unfortunately has enlisted itself as one such nation; and air, water, and even
sunshine seem to have been "brought within the capitalist logic of accumulation"
under the accelerated condition of capitalism and the unprecedented speed and scale
of environmental deterioration in the country.P" Of course, for poor people, such
as those living in the heavily polluted lands that Wang has documented, their fate is
doomed since they have very limited means to participate in the new economy of air,
water, and sunshine that can save them from the man-made disaster. There is only
one thing that is left free for them, that is, to suffer-unless more public awareness
is raised and more bottom-up collective action is taken to advance favorable social
changes. • shtml, accessedFebruary 16, 2014.
The Land is a continuation of Wang Jiuliang's long-term effort to research and
document consumption-induced environmental devastation and to convey the mes-
sage that everybody, knowingly or unknowingly, has contributed to the magnitude
of ecological degradation. In turn, he believes that if ordinary people are willing to
change their lifestyle accordingly, they could help soften or even solve pollution of
all kinds.P? He is fully aware of the difficulty of initiating changes but insists that
he nonetheless wants to try, and hopes that the efforts of individuals like him would
amount to a certain momentum for change, if even on a small scale.'!' Metaphorically,
he associates his effort with a situation described in a traditional Chinese idiom-"a
mayfly trying to shake a tree"-and states: "although it is a very dangerous process, at
least you have the possibility of change. If you do nothing, there is no possibility." 132
As such, the belief in the hope of change undergirds Wang's continuous environmental
activism since he started focusing his camera on the waste dumps on the outskirts of
Beijing in 2008. And it is this belief that aligns his practice with other artists-turned-
citizen intellectuals who are doing small-scale work in their effort to address social
problems, raise public awareness, call for change, create new spaces and forms of
cultural intervention, and activate mass participation in the name of art for the bet-
terment of society.
Notes
" This chapter is derived in part from Meiqin Wang, "The Socially Engaged Practices of Art-
ists in Contemporary China," Journal of Visual Art Practice 16, no. 1 (2017): 15-38.
1 Zhong Gang, "Hope to Let More People See the Landfills Surrounding Us," Southern
Metropolis Daily, December 13, 2009.
2 Woodworth, "Inner-City Culture Wars," 219-20.
3 Zhong, "Hope to Let More People See the Landfills."
Waste, Pollution, and Environment Activism 77
4 Wang Jiuliang, "Beijing Besieged by Garbage," Cross-Currents E-Journal, no. 1 (2011),
https://cross-currents.berkeley.eduie-journaVphoto-essay/beijing-besieged-garbage/statement.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Shi Yan, "Wang Jiuliang and Documentary Plastic China," Southern Weekly, December 11,
2016.
8 Wang Jiuliang, "Beijing Besieged."
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Shih-yang Kao, "Beijing Besieged by Garbage," Cross-Currents E-Journal, no. 1 (2011),
https:llcross-currents.berkeley.edule-journallphoto-essay/beijing-besieged-garbage.
12 Ibid.
13 Zhong Gang, "Hope to Let More People See the Landfills."
14 Ibid.
15 Wang Jiuliang, "Beijing Besieged."
16 Wang Jiuliang, interview with the author, Beijing, July 5, 2015.
17 Zhao Zhiwei, "Wang Jiuliang: The Discoverer of 'Beijing Besieged by Waste'," Minsheng
Weekly 32 (2011).
18 Wang Jiuliang, interview with the author.
19 Zhong, "Hope to Let More People See the Landfills."
20 Dan Hoornweg, Philip Lam, and Manish Chaudhry, Waste Management in China: Issues
and Recommendations (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2008), 1.
21 See Yuan Hui et ai., "Urban Solid Waste Management in Chongqing: Challenges and
Opportunities," Waste Management 26 (2006): 1052-62 and Yu Li, "Urban Waste Prob-
lem in China," May 15, 2013, http://english.cntv.cn/program/china24/20130415/103590.
22 Shih-yang Kao, "Beijing Besieged."
23 Yu Li, "Urban Waste Problem."
24 Ibid.
25 This section is a revised version of an earlier essay: Meiqin Wang, "Waste in Contemporary
Chinese Art," The Newsletter: International Institute for Asian Studies, no.76 (2017): 32-33.
26 Maya Kovskaya, China under Construction: Contemporary Art from the People's Republic
(Beijing: Futurista Art Beijing, 2007), 9.
27 Wang Zhiyuan, "Artist's Statement," http://www.chinaartprojects.com/wang-zhiyuans-
statement/, accessed February 16, 2014.
28 See China Biue, "Xu Bing's 'Phoenix Project'," August 6, 2013, http://theengineinstitute.
orglxu-bings-phoenix-project, accessed February 16, 2017; Heval Okcuoglu, "Phoenix
Project," September 3, 2013, http://bonemagazine.comlenlentry/phoenix-project accessed
February 16, 2014; Seth Rogovoy, "Xu Bing: Phoenix, Featuring Monumental Sculpture,
Opens at MASS MoCA on Dec 22, 2012," December 16, 2012, http://rogovoyreport.
cornl2012112116/xu-bing-phoenix-exhibition-mass-moca/, accessed February 16,2017.
29 Evan Osnos, "Q. & A.: Xu Bing," New Yorker, April 20, 2010.
30 China Blue, "Xu Bing's 'Phoenix Project'." The Center on Housing Rights and Evictions
(COHRE) reported that 1.25 million people were forcibly relocated due to "Olympics-
related redevelopment," with another quarter of a million evictions expected. See Deanne
Fowler, One World, Whose Dream? Housing Rights Violations and the Beijing Olympic
Games (Geneva: COHRE, 2008).
31 Xu Bing rejected the developers' suggestion to wrap the work in crystal-like glass that would
conform to the style of the extravagant building itself.
32 MASS MoCA, Xu Bing: Phoenix (North Adams: Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary
Art, 2012), 9.
33 Liu Xintao, "Collapsing Night: Self-Decomposition and Reconstruction," in Mobile Art 3-
Figurative Art Research: Image and Consumption, ed. Peng Feng (Nanchang: Jiangxi Fine
Arts Press, 2010), 135.
34 Wu Hung, Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century (Chi-
cago: Smart Museum of Art, 1999), 23.
35 Zhao Zhiwei, "Wang Jiuliang."
78 Art and Social Criticism Waste, Pollution, and Environment Activism 79
36 Sheldon Lu, "Introduction: Chinese-Language Ecocinema," Journal of Chinese Cinemas up by CNEX Studio Corporation in 2014, a Hong Kong non-profit foundation devoted to
11, no. 1 (2017): 6. the production and promotion of Chinese documentary films, which then functioned as the
37 See Chapter 1 for more discussion on this topic. main producer for the film. For more, see the official website, https:llwww.plasticchina.orgl.
38 Zhao Zhiwei, "Wang Jiuliang." 64 Liu Qin, "How China Became."
39 Su Xinqi, "Plastic China Director: What is Terrible Is that Certain People Choose to Let the 65 Ibid.
Victims Continue to Suffer," January 25, 2017, https:lltheinitium.comfarticle/20170125- 66 Yi Jie would probably be able to go to a local public school if her father Peng could pay a
mainland-wangjiuliangl, accessed July 19,2017. tuition fee much higher than that charged to locals, although it would still be a complicated
40 Zhao Zhiwei, "Wang Jiuliang" and Li Yan, "The Photographer of the Garbage Age," matter due to the fact that they were migrants without proper residency permits. However,
Southern Metropolis Weekly, May 17, 201l. we are told that Peng's reported wage is $6.50 a day and besides spending on alcohol for
41 Du Li and Sheng Xuan, "'City Besieged by Waste' Awaits Solution, Representatives of himself and daily necessities for a family of seven, he probably does not have much left. Yi
NPC and CPPCC Proposed Solutions," March 13, 2012, http://musicradio.cnradio. Jie's best chance would be going back to her home village in Sichuan for education, but her
com.cn12012zt/qglh2012/jzbb/duli/jizhebaodao/201203lt20120313_509278721.shtml, father was not able to pay the bus fare for the long distance, (around $75).
accessed July 9, 2017. 67 Neil Young, "'Plastic China': Film Review," December 30, 2016, http://www.hollywood
42 Wang had some reservations about certain approaches which, according to him, were not reporter.comfreview/plastic-china-film-review-958562, accessed July 21, 2017.
only costly but might also jeopardize the effect of the cleaning effort. See Cui Weimin, 68 Allan Hunter, '''Plastic China': Sundance Review," January 21, 2017, http://m.screendaily.
"Wang Jiuliang's Documentaries: From Beijing Besieged by Waste to Plastic China," Envi- comf5112603.article, accessed July 21, 2017.
ronmental Education, no. 10 (2015): 13-16 and Yang Yang, "Wang Jiuliang: Encounter the 69 Kiki Zhao, "Revealing China" and Zhang Chunyan, "What Signals Do the Ban on Foreign
Inner City at Garbage Dumps and Be Surprised," New Weekly, March 15, 2014, https:11 Scrap Release?" China Environment News, April 28, 2017.
www.15yan.comfstoryIlFGTtYkRDq8/, accessed June 29, 2017. 70 Liu Qin, "How China Became."
43 Li Honglei, "Healthy China Cannot Tolerate Being Sieged by Foreign Scrap," Xinhua Daily 71 Ibid.
Telegraph, April 20, 2017. 72 Ibid.
44 Wang Linlin, Liu Shuo, and Dong Xiaohong, "All Criticized the Excessive Packaging: 73 See Sherisse Pham and Matt Rivers, "China is Crushing the U.S. in Renewable Energy,"
These Core Issues Are the Key!" Xinhua News, May 31, 2017, http://news.xinhuanet.comf money.cnn.com, July 18, 20~ 7; Patrick Caughill, "China Is the New World Leader in
fortune12017-051311c_112106489l.htm, accessed July 9, 2017. Renewable Energy," January 16, 2018, https:llfuturism.comfchina-new-world-leader-renew
45 Ban Wang, "Of Humans and Nature in Documentary: The Logic of Capital in West of able-energy; i}nmar Frangoul, "China Becomes a 'Driving Power' for Solar Energy with
the Tracks and Blind Shaft," in Chinese Ecocinema: In the Age of Environmental Chal- $86.5 Billion Invested Last Year," CNBC.com, April 6, 2018.
lenge, eds. Lu Sheldon H. and Mi Jiayan (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 74 Smith, "China's Communist-Capitalist Ecological Apocalypse." Real-World Economics
2009), 164. Review, no. 71 (2015).
46 Lu, "Introduction," 1-12. 75 Ibid.
47 Ibid., 4. 76 Kiki Zhao, "Revealing China."
48 Ibid., 5-6. 77 Richard Smith, "Climate Crisis and Managed Deindustrialization: Debating Alternatives to
49 Wang Jiuliang, "Beijing Besieged." Ecological Collapse," Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism, November 21,
50 Michelle Bogre, Photography as Activism (Waltham, MA: Focal Press 2012), 1-2. 2017, https:/lforhumanliberation.blogspot.de/201711112753-climate-crisis-and-managed.
51 Guobing Yang and Craig Calhoun, "Media, Civil Society, and the Rise of a Green Public html, accessed May 23, 2018.
Sphere in China," China Information 21, no. 2 (2007): 211-36. 78 Wang Xiaoming, "What the 'Housing Problem' Shows about Today's China," Cultural
52 lEAS, "Beijing Besieged: Wang Jiuliang's Urban Ecology Unhinged," http://ieas.berkeley. Studies31, no. 6 (2017): 842-43.
edu/evenrs/Beiiing.Besieged.hrml, accessed June 28, 2017. 79 Ban Wang, "Of Humans and Nature," 166.
53 Li Yan, "The Photographer." 80 Liu Qin, "How China Became."
54 Liu Qin, "How China Became the World's Rubbish Dump," May 1,2014, https:llwww. 81 Ibid.
china dialogue .netl cui turel 6947 -Film -How -China -became-the- wor ld -s-ru bbish -d umpl en, 82 David Harvey, "The Enigma of Capital and the Crisis this Time," in Business as Usual: The
accessed June 28, 2017. Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown, eds. Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian (New
55 Kiki Zhao, "Revealing China's Environmental Woes in Films that Go Viral, Then Vanish," York: New York University Press, 2011),89-112.
New York Times, April 29, 2017. 83 Ibid.
56 Cui Weimin, "Wang Jiuliang." 84 David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
57 Daniel Powell, "Assessing and Improving China's E-waste Problem," April 8, 2013, http:// versity Press, 2010), 215.
ourworld.unu.edulenlassessing-and-improving-the-e-waste-problem-in-china, accessed 85 Ibid., 228.
March 2,2015. Also see Ivan Watson, "China: The Electronic Wastebasket of the World," 86 Chen Pingxuan, "Interview with Plastic China Director Wang Jiuliang: Garbage Problem
CNN, May 30, 2013. of the Consumerist Society Finds No Solution," December 12, 2016, http://cinephilia.
58 Shi Yan, "Wang Jiuliang." netl44697, accessed July 10, 2017.
59 Kiki Zhao, "Revealing China." 87 Plastic China won the Special Jury Award at the 2016 Amsterdam International Documen-
60 Cui Weimin, "Wang Jiuliang." tary Film Festival and was nominated for the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documen-
61 Ibid. tary at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, among others.
62 Kiki Zhao, "Revealing China." 88 See Skykiwi.com's "Special Interview with Chen Lingzhen, the Producer of Plastic China"
63 The documentary was initially funded by Yue Guanting, an old friend of Wang who runs a at https:llwww.youtube.comfwatch?v=nFkaAswhfwO, accessed July 1, 2017.
software company, Beijing TYC Media, and Yue is credited as the film's co-producer. Wang 89 For examples, see Young, "Plastic China"; Joe Bendel, "Sundance '17: Plastic China," Jan-
also sought funding here and there from friends or non-profit organizations, and even had uary 21, 2017, http://jbspins.blogspot.comf2017/01/sundance-17-plastic-china.html; and
to stop for several months when the funding ran out. Finally, the documentary was picked Hunter, "Plastic China."
80 Art and Social Criticism
90 MiguelStreet, "Two Years Ago He Filmed Plastic China, but His War with Waste Has Lasted
for Eight Years," January 5, 2017, http://wemedia.ifeng.com/6774100/wemedia.shtml.
accessed July 9, 2017.
91 Chen Pingxuan, "Interview with Plastic China Director."
92 Su Xinqi, "Plastic China Director."
93 Xinhua, "China's Netizen Population Hits 668 Million," China Daily, July 23, 2015; Fan
Dong, "Controlling the Internet in China: The Real Story," Convergence: The Interna-
tional Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 18, no. 4 (2012): 403-25.
94 Wang Jiuliang, "20 Photos of the Land of China.". The video was available at https:11
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FHoesdzHGI. accessed July 2, 2017.
95 Chen Pingxuan, "Interview with Plastic China Director."
96 The CCTV Finance Official Channel interviewed Wang Jiuliang and discussed Plastic
China in a half-hour program broadcast nationwide on January 2, 2015. The broadcast is
available at https:llwww.youtube.com/watch?v=2IdMTLCC]nI. accessed July 10, 2017.
97 Peter Ho, "Self-Imposed Censorship and De-Politicized Politics in China: Green Activism
or a Color Revolution?" in China's Embedded Activism Opportunities and Constraints of
a Social Movement, eds. Peter Ho and Richard L. Edmonds (New York: Routledge, 2008),
20-43; Rebecca Catching, "The New Face of Censorship: State Control of the Visual
Arts in Shanghai, 2008-2011," Journal of Visual Art Practice 11 no. 2/3 (2012): 231-49;
Astrid Nordin and Lisa Richaud, "Subverting Official Language and Discourse In China?
Type River Crab for Harmony," China Information 28, no. 1 (2014): 47-67.
98 Kiki Zhao, "Revealing China."
99 Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, "How Censorship in China Allows
Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression," American Political Science
Review 107, no. 2 (2013): 326.
100 He Qinglian, "Plastic China and the Disappearance of Government Regulation,'; Chinese
Human Rights Biweekly 200 (2017), http://www.hrichina.orglchs/di-200qi-2017nian-
1yue-6ri-1yue-19ri, accessed July 7, 2017.
101 Ibid.
102 Ibid.
103 Harvey, The Enigma of Capital, 228.
104 Albert Schweinberger, "State Capitalism, Entrepreneurship, and Networks: China's Rise
to a Superpower," Journal of Economic Issues 48, no. 1 (2014): 169-80; Michael Keith
et aI., China Constructing Capitalism: Economic Life and Urban Change (New York:
Routledge, 2014); Smith, "China's Communist-Capitalist Ecological Apocalypse."
105 The film is available at https:llwww.yourube.com/watch?v=T6X2uwIQGQM. accessed
July 10, 2017. For an in-depth study of the film, see Shuqin Cui, "Chai Jing's Under the
Dome: A Multimedia Documentary in the Digital Age," Journal of Chinese Cinemas 11,
no. 1 (2017): 30-45.
106 Edward Wong, "Air Pollution Linked to 1.2 Million Premature Deaths in China," New
York Times, April 1, 2013.
107 Steven Mufson, "This Documentary Went Viral in China. Then It Was Censored. It Won't
Be Forgotten," Washington Post, March 16,2015.
108 See Edward Wong, "China Blocks Web Access to 'Under the Dome' Documentary on
Pollution," New York Times, March 8, 2015 and Yuan Ren, "Under the Dome: Will This
Film Be China's Environmental Awakening?" The Guardian, March 8,2015, https:llwww.
theguardian.coml commentisfree120 15ImariO 5lunder-the-dome-china -poll ution -chai -jing,
accessed July 16, 2017.
109 Yuan Ren, "Under the Dome," and Mark Tran, "Phenomenal Success for New Film that
Criticises China's Environmental Policy," The Guardian, March 2, 2015, https:llwww.
theguardia n. com/wor Id/2 0 151rnar/O21china -envir on men tal- po licy-documentary -un der-
the-dome-chai-jing-video, accessed July 16, 2017.
110 Shuqin Cui, "Chai Jing," 43.
111 Mufson, "This Documentary."
112 Wang Jiuliang, "20 Photos."
113 Li Honglei, "Healthy China."
Waste, Pollution, and Environment Activism 81
114 "General Administration of Customs Directed the '317' Special Action Combating 'For-
eign Garbage' Smuggling, March 17, 2017, http://www.customs.gov.cnlpublishiportalO/
tab49 564linf084 2660.htm.
115 Li Honglei, "Healthy China" and Zhang Chunyan, "What Signals?"
116 "Constitution of the People's Republic of China," http://www.npc.gov.cnlenglishnpclCon
stitutionl2007 -11115lcontent_13 72964.htm, accessed January 22, 2018.
117 The author sadly learnt that Liu Xiaobo died on July 13, 2017 at age 61. The Chinese
government revealed that he had advanced liver cancer in May, only after the illness was
virtually beyond treatment. Even as he was facing death, he was kept captive in a guarded
hospital. His wife, Liu Xia, has been under house arrest and surveillance, since his Nobel
Prize was announced, which prevented her from speaking out about Liu's belated treat-
ment for cancer. See Chris Buckley, "Liu Xiaobo, Chinese Dissident Who Won Nobel
While Jailed, Dies at 61," New York Times, July 13,2017.
118 After the death of Liu Xiaobo was officially announced, the author found that all posts on
WeChat about Liu Xiaobo among friends' circles disappeared within one hour. Because of
the tight censorship of Liu's name, many Chinese people probably even did not know who
he was, the sacrifice he had made to promote individual liberty, or that he won the Nobel
Peace Prize.
119 Shuqin Cui, "Chai Jing," 30.
120 Lu, "Introduction," 3-4.
121 Ibid.
122 Guobin Yan, "Civic Environmentalism," in Reclaiming Chinese Society: The New Social
Activism, eds. You-tien Hsing and Ching Kwan Lee (London: Routledge, 2010),122,133.
123 See Guobin Yang, The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2009); James Leibold, "Blogging Alone: China, the Internet,
and the Dembcratic Illusions?" Journal of Asian Studies 70, no. 4 (2011): 1023-41; Ning
Zhang, "Web-based Backpacking Communities and Online Activism in China: Movement
without Marching," China Information 28, no. 2 (2014): 276-96; and Freedom House,
"Freedom on the Net."
124 Personal communication, November 12, 2017.
125 Wang Jiuliang, "20 Photos."
126 Steve Hanley, "Carbon Emissions from Travel Industry Are 4 Times Higher than Esti-
mates," May 14, 2018. https:llcleantechnica.com/2018/05/14/trave!-related-emissions-
four-times-greater-than-people-thinkl, accessed May 23, 2018.
127 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 329.
128 David Harvey, The New Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003),145-46.
129 Ibid.
130 Fu Yao, "Wang Jiuliang: A Person's Anti-Garbage War," China News Weekly 695, Febru-
ary 5, 2015.
131 Ibid.
132 Su Xinqi, "Plastic China Director."
Part II
Art and Place Construction

Overview
Part II (Chapter 3 and Chapter 4) considers the force of art for grassroots commu-
nity building, cultural and natural heritage conservation, and place-making. "Art and
place construction" here refers to various bottom-up efforts initiated by individual
art professionals in different locations through art and cultural programs to revitalize
urban neighborhoods or rural regions through conserving traditional built environ-
ments, promoting local handicrafts, and creating new public spaces and programs to
foster sustainable social, cultural, and economic relations. "Bottom-up" in this context
is related to a self-positioned independence that art professionals assume against the
ideological frameworks, developmental policies, and place-making discourses pro-
moted by the Chinese state in a top-down fashion. Simply put, they seek artistic,
creative, and experimental solutions to various place-related social and cultural prob-
lems derived from China's relentless pursuit of economic growth and market-oriented
urbanization; however in concrete projects they might strategically collaborate with
government agencies or tap into certain official discourses to advance their alternative
agendas. Through analyzing several projects championed by two art professionals,
Zheng Dazhen and Zuo ling, this section discusses how they negotiate with existing
social conditions and relations for alternative place construction endeavors that bear
the potential of expanding public civic space and improving the overall livability of
specific communities.