The trend for inexpensively produced but quality products in
China is leaving some companies unable to adopt corporate social
responsibility, a media workshop in Beijing was told.
Dennis Driscoll, co-director of Peking University's Law School,
told the event on Saturday that both Chinese and foreign-funded
enterprises sometimes struggled to balance productivity with the
need to protect the welfare of workers and the environment.
"Many Chinese companies say they cannot be socially responsible
while making money," said Driscoll, who is also president of the
Irish branch of the International Law Association.
His studies found management in such companies concentrated on
their relationships with governments rather than establishing good
business strategies that also helped employees.
He said some Chinese suppliers, such as shoemakers in Shenzhen,
had little understanding of the dimensions of corporate social
responsibility and were not efficient in human resources management
and communications.
As China's booming economy attracts increasing foreign
investment, ordinary laborers, particularly the 200 million migrant
workers in the export processing industry, have suffered harder
workloads.
Liu Kaiming, executive director of Shenzhen-based Institute of
Contemporary Observation, said at Saturday's workshop co-sponsored
by pharmaceutical firm Bayer and Peking University that the group
worked an average of 6.4 days per week and 9.4 hours per day, but
were paid poorly.
He said encouraging Chinese suppliers to be socially compliant
was important and urgent.
Currently, anti-sweatshop organizations in the West and
multinational corporations mainly drive the movement for corporate
social responsibility.
But ironically, multinational firms, which are imposing
ever-growing requirements on Asian factories to abide by codes of
conduct, continually demand goods at lower prices delivered at
greater speed. It means the factories find it hard to be socially
compliant.
"Multinational firms and Western consumers should be held partly
responsible," Driscoll said.
(China Daily April 25, 2006)