Not a lost cause?

Faced with the China challenge, some practitioners, analysts, or advocates of corporate citizenship may lose hope in the potential of voluntary business action. However, evidence in 2005 suggests that it would be wrong to assume that Chinese business and government are inescapably opposed to improving the social and environmental impacts and contributions of business. A WWF survey on China and the environment suggests that some of China's biggest and most important companies are intent on improving environmental standards and practices. All of the companies that participated in the survey said protecting the environment was important, with more than half indicating that it was part of their company's core values. The survey reported that 22% of respondents are implementing tougher environment standards than legally required, with 13% calling for even stricter mandatory rules.85

Some opinion leaders in the Chinese business community have begun calling for greater action. In April, Dr Xu Zhiming, Chairman of the Hong Kong General Association of International Investment, appealed to Chinese entrepreneurs to be more socially responsible.86 Meanwhile, on behalf of 23 food corporations in Beijing, the general manager of the Yili Group, Liu Haichun, stated that the industry would actively advocate CSR and improve the industry’s reputation.87 Companies are undertaking numerous voluntary projects to improve their impacts. For example, the Hang Seng Bank has launched an e-Statement Tree Planting Scheme in Hong Kong, whereby the bank will pay for one tree to be planted for every 10 paper statements that are avoided by its customers using e-statements instead.88

Another area where business is beginning to be proactive concerns HIV/AIDS. In May the People's Republic of China Ministry of Health and Merck Co., Inc. announced their plan to establish a public-private partnership to fight HIV/AIDS. The Merck Company Foundation will support the new $30 million program that includes education, prevention, care and treatment. The partnership represents the largest of its kind in China and will be launched in the fall of 2005 in the Liangshan Prefecture in Sichuan Province. Trevor Neilson, GBC's executive director, said that "China's HIV/AIDS epidemic is starting to move from high-risk groups to the general population. Merck's commitment to tackle HIV/AIDS among drug users and sex workers presents a unique opportunity for China and shows that companies don't need to shy away from HIV/AIDS prevention programs in countries where the epidemic is still centered on these groups."89 The following week the GBC announced that another 26 companies were taking steps to implement non-discrimination policies for HIV/AIDS for their China-based employees. These moves have come after Chinese Vice Premier Madame Wu Yi’s call on companies to take action to stem the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic.90

This initiative reflects the government’s growing awareness of novel social challenges that are arising from rapid changes in Chinese society. On the environmental front, some sections of the government are recognising the damage that is being caused to its people, and is enforcing legislation. It has, for example, introduced strict fuel-economy standards for new cars, and passed a renewable-energy law that sets ambitious targets for using wind and solar energy.90 Meanwhile the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) has demanded that Chongqing, Shenyang, Wuhan, Xi'an and Harbin regulate material waste producers, make greater efforts to enforce related laws, build an orderly recycling system of sensitive material wastes, and gain experience that can be used to develop a nationwide solution to the environmental problems caused by sensitive material wastes.92 SEPA is particularly concerned with reducing the use of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), and implementing the Stockholm Convention on POPs.93 There has also been some movement on social issues, illustrated by the Shenzhen government fining 22 enterprises for not paying back wages and worker insurance.94 In April a factory owner in Shandong was punished for hiring workers under 17 and working them 15 hours per day, a form of abuse that the government has not policed effectively in the past.95 In his Blog on corporate responsibility, ERM’s director of CSR services in the China, Mark Eadie, reported in May that as the government works on China's 11th Five Year Plans “it is looking increasingly likely that sustainable development aspirations and objectives will be put into the central planning process.”96

There are some indications that Chinese society is beginning to respond to its social and environmental challenges, and so Western companies may not be able to claim that such matters are beyond their control and responsibility in that country. Indeed, in April the tables were turned when Guo Wencai  from the All-China Federation of Trade Unions  criticised the lack of responsibility from Western companies. He said that "some foreign enterprises, with Wal-Mart being representative, turned a blind eye to China's Trade Union Laws and set very negative examples during the country's unionizing effort".97

There are also indications that the assumption that demand for Chinese products from other parts of Asia is not sensitive to sustainable development concerns may also be questioned. In particular, Japan has experienced something of an environmental awakening in the last 10 years. This was illustrated by the Japanese electronics company Sony announcing tough new environmental tests for more than 4,000 Chinese electronics manufacturers. This is a result of the electronics giant adopting a new Green Partner programme for environmental management systems. The influence of Europe in this environmental initiative is apparent, as one of the reasons for Sony’s action is to ensure it meets standards set by the European Union on electronics products. About 3000 of the manufacturers are expected to fail Sony's new test and be threatened with dropping off its supplier list unless they can improve.98

The dramatic impacts of industrialisation in China and the rest of East Asia on their own peoples and environments, as well as the impact on the global environment, and the increasing importance of the region for the future supply to, and sales of, major transnational corporations, makes the region of central importance for future work on corporate citizenship. It was this context that led to the creation of ‘CSR Asia’ at the start of the year. Founded by Richard Welford of the Corporate Environmental Governance Programme (CEGP) at the University of Hong Kong and Stephen Frost of the South East Asia Research Centre (SEARC) at the City University of Hong Kong, CSR Asia provides information, research, training and analysis of CSR issues in the Asia Pacific region. It has offices in Hong Kong and Shenzhen and plans to expand further around the region.99

The importance of the region to the future of the world is so great that more of the world’s best minds on sustainable development are needed to apply themselves to the necessary sustainability transition in Asia. Currently corporate and governmental responses to sustainable development in the region are insufficient, as they generally seek to add-on social and environmental issues to a dominant paradigm of economic development, which necessitates greater consumption and pollution. That model of economic development is a psychological hangover from colonialism, as it is based on a perspective of human nature and social progress which arose from European societies. Sustainable development requires us to re-conceive human wellbeing beyond the merely material, and therefore re-configure the processes that create resource demands as well as those that shape how such demands are met. Given the philosophical history of Asia, especially the holistic notion of the individual as existing in connection with all of that lives, as reflected in many Buddhist, Jain, Hindu and Taoist teachings, sensitivity to collective and environmental needs should not be intellectually foreign to Asians. The scale and urgency of the challenge makes it important that these philosophies are recalled. The future of human civilization will be determined in Asia. In its present it holds the seeds of the world’s destruction, in its past it has the seeds of its salvation.

contents © Greenleaf Publishing, apart from the Introduction © jem bendell, 2006. site by waywardmedia.com