BarnardSarah_China+Revs+Up

  //China Revs Up // | Chris Schmidt | 2004   //China Revs Up // is a shocking film about the ever-increasing impact China is beginning to have on pollution levels. With twenty-five percent of the world’s population and as the world’s biggest country, China’s economy has grown eight percent per year for each of the last ten years. As more and more Chinese begin wanting the American middle-class quality of life, pollution levels will continue to rise as industry grows to keep up. Currently, 7 out of the world’s 10 top polluted cities are located in China, and the situation presently only stands to get worse. Yet, as industrialized countries, do countries like the U.S. have the right to hold developing countries to higher standards than we ourselves faced in the process of development? Regardless, as China continues to grow, overpopulation and pollution threaten not only the country, but ramifications will spread worldwide.   Political, technological, behavioral, and ecological problems are all drawn out as part of a larger sustainability matrix in //China Revs Up//. During the 1970s, the Great Leap Forward in China led to an economic disaster. In 1979, a new leader, Deng Xiao Ping, dismantled the Communist economy, and also reigned-in population growth through the One Child Rule. Outraging human rights groups, the One Child Policy was quite effective at reducing the population. Yet as the country began to industrialize, no governmental regulations were put in place. Twenty years passed with no pollution control, and levels are still out of control today. China’s pollution is making it to the West Coast of the United States, affecting the air quality even more of one of the most consumptive countries in the world. This is due to China’s large supply and usage of coal, as China uses 25% more coal than the United States today. Increases in the numbers of cars on the road also affect air pollution levels, often most drastically in dense urban areas.  This large increase in the number of cars on the road is related to the increased quality of life the Chinese have come to expect. As the behavioral patterns of the Chinese begin to reflect those of the American middle-class, pollution and other environmental effects will continue to increase. There are also much less strict emissions guidelines in China, following Euro2 standards that are 10 years out of date. The new push is toward SUVs, and almost all of Chinese cars are made by foreign companies. While families still remain small, the One-Child Policy has been revoked, causing additional population growth.  Politically, the government of China has not done much in the past to attempt to regulate China’s industrialization. Their lack of implementation of emissions standards and pollution controls couples with the lack of technological innovation to add to the matrix of sustainability problems. The government is focused on the economic and social status of the country, while there is already a lack of potable water for the gigantic population size. China has 25% of the world’s population and only 7% of its arable land. Without government regulation, the people of China will continue to overreach their environmental boundaries and cause even larger-scale problems for the future involving food, water, and air quality.   The story of the Zhinong family who moved into Beijing to attempt to find a better life for themselves and their daughter was quite compelling. While most of the film focuses on China as a whole, lumping the population together into one set of statistics, the Zhinong family gives the film a more human scale. It is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that China should regulate more pollution or stop striving for the American way of life, but it is eye-opening to see one family just trying to improve their own quality of life. It is a reminder that in other countries, as in the United States, people are trying to look out for the best-interest of themselves and their families, and they certainly don’t have the goal of affecting the entire world in mind. It was persuasive to hear the role the government has played in the past in attempting to control China on many levels. I was also quite compelled by the idea at the end of similar standards for developing countries as “industrialized” countries have already faced. Is it fair to force a country to grow slower because we won’t allow them to make the same mistakes we did? I found these thoughts on the continued growth of population, both in China and all over the world, quite persuasive.   While //China Revs Up// was quite informative, I was not convinced overall by the quality of the film. The film seemed to have good information, but was not portrayed in an exciting or intriguing way. A lot of the information was more general knowledge, as opposed to scientific facts or more detailed analyses. //China Revs Up// was certainly not the best film I’ve seen this semester, but it does portray a lot of the information that it sets out to. I also didn’t find the car buying scene very convincing, other than to show the lack of regulations on many of the cars being sold. The scenes of checking for pollution on the western coast of the United States were not very compelling, as they lacked a lot of information and only spoke of China’s effects on us, and not our effects on other countries. <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> I would be interested to learn a little more about the pollution from China that is supposedly arriving at the western coast of the United States. It makes sense due to air circulation patterns and other climate links, but I’m curious how they begin testing to find out if the effects are actually from the United States or China. I also think it would be interesting to find out how many other countries the United States is polluting before jumping to any conclusions about China’s impact on us. <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> This film best addresses a variety of audiences. The topics covered are very broad, making the film acceptable for a large selection of people with different starting knowledge sets. //China Revs Up// makes viewers think about the impacts the world’s population will have on everyone’s quality of life, as well as their own. I’m not sure the film would change the way anyone thinks about pollution, but it was convincing to think about China’s current role in relation to the United States’ initial plans while it was industrializing. <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> //<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">China Revs Up //<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> has two main big pictures: overpopulation is occurring at an alarming rate, and there is a lack of regulation on many parts of the rising industry. The film seems to say that the government needs to have a certain level control over the industrializing process as China continues to grow. It also suggests that individuals will need to begin to learn other styles of life. If everyone in the world lived as the typical American, it would take more than 3 earths to sustain us. Recognizing these problems of overpopulation and resource degradation would be an important action of this film. <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> The film could have had some more scientific facts or more in depth research to enhance the environmental educational value. It seemed that the examples that were portrayed during the movie were only intended to get across really large scale ideas, and I think some more important content could have been pushed through while increasing the educational value of the film. The film was a little dry, which made it harder to draw a lot of environmental impacts from it.
 * <span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Sarah Barnard | Film Annotation 5 | //China Revs Up// ** <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">
 * <span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">1. Title, director and release year **
 * 2. What is the central argument or narrative of the film?**
 * 3. What sustainability problems does the film draw out?**
 * 4. What parts of the film did you find most persuasive and compelling? Why?**
 * 5. What parts of the film were you not compelled or convinced by?**
 * 6. What additional information does this film compel you to seek out? Where do you want to dig deeper and what connections do you want to make with other issues, factors, problems, etc.?**
 * 7. What audiences does the film best address? What kind of imagination is fostered in viewers? Do you think the film is likely to change the way viewers think about and act on environmental problems?**
 * 8. What kinds of action or points of intervention are suggested by the film?**
 * 9. What could have been added to this film to enhance its environmental educational value?**