China's CSR voice in Brussels

 
Foreign Trade Association (FTA) hosted its annual conference 'Unleash Opportunity' in Brussels on June 14 and 15 to celebrate its 40 year anniversary. Representing Europe's largest sustainability conference, it gathered more than 400 representatives from business, governments, NGOs, academia and media. Ms. Lin Bo, the Associate Editor-in-Chief of China WTO Tribune, was also invited to speak in the conference, sharing China’s CSR information disclosure and practices.
     
In the Panel of Building a Sustainable Belt & Road Value Chain - FTA and Multilateral Partnerships in China, Ms. Lin shared the progress of CSR information disclosure in China from the following three aspects:
 
The overview of CSR development in China
 
GoldenBee has collected and studied all sorts of CSR reports in China for 8 consecutive years and built China's dynamic CSR report database. Up to now, nearly 14,282 CSR reports (including published CSR information) have been collected in GoldenBee CSR report database. The overall numbers of reports has been increasing steadily, and the number of high-quality reports has largely risen. Enterprises in China began to pay higher attention to the CSR management and the internationalization of social responsibility report.
   
Regular CSR information disclosure
 
Besides CSR reports, enterprises disclose the regular social responsibility information via website, newsletter, internal magazine for the timely communication and exchange of CSR information. The regular CSR information disclosure enhances the two-way communication to get stakeholders' understanding and support; strengthens communication with different departments within an enterprise; discovers good practices; and accumulates source materials for annual CSR reports.
 
Communication for special issues
 
Enterprises communicate with stakeholders about special issues through stakeholder meetings, CSR open day, etc., to improve mutual understanding and eliminate misunderstanding. The values of regular CSR information disclosure are: directly communicate and exchange with stakeholders about specific issues to understand their needs and expectation; answer stakeholders' requests and eliminate misunderstanding; communicate face-to-face to get more straightforward suggestions and measures for improvement.
       
In this conference, the most notable is the show-up of "Chinese delegation" consisting of 11 representatives: Hu Yan, the Counsel of Department of Electronics, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and the Chairman of Chinese Electronics Standardization Association, Guo Xiu Ming, the Associate Counsel of Department of Policies, Laws and Regulations, MIIT, Xiong Huajun, the Deputy Secretary-General of Chinese Electronics Standardization Association, and the representatives from professional organizations in social responsibility, such as the China Federation of Industrial Economics, China National Textile And Apparel Council, Zhejiang Province CSR Promotion Association, etc.
 
As the representative of "Chinese delegation", Hu Yan, the Counsel of Department of Electronics, MIIT and the Chairman of Chinese Electronics Standardization Association, gave a speech and shared Sino-European cooperation in social responsibility and the progress of joint promotion of international cooperation network building and mutual trust and integration of different social responsibility standards in electronic information industry between FTA and Chinese counterparts. She expected to work with European CSR colleagues to explore how to contribute to global sustainable development driven by the Belt and Road Initiative and the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
 
In addition, Wang Xiaoguang, the Director of the CSR Promotion Center, China Federation of Industrial Economics, Cai Ning, the Professor and Ph.D. Supervisor of School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, also introduced China's CSR development from the different aspects of industry association and local governments.
 
While celebrating its 40 year anniversary, FTA also announced its new strategy for the future, Vision 2030, and the new brand identity for the organization that will embody this strategy as of January 2018: Amfori. Under the new brand, Amfori will embody its strategy of positioning and clearly promote the aims of the association: bring interests to society, environment and economy with trade to further benefit the world.
     
Since 2008, China WTO Tribune has cooperated with FTA to hold the Sino-European CSR Round Table Forum and by now 16 sessions have been successfully held. The themes of this Forum cover "Reshape Supply Chain Partnership to Create Shared Values for Sustainable Development", "Localize SDGs to Build Sustainable Supply Chain", "COP21 & the 13th Five-Year Plan – Implications for Sustainable Supply Chain".
 
In 2016, FTA, China WTO Tribune, Zhejiang CSR Promotion Association, Social Responsibility Committee of China Electronic Standardization Association and other important Chinese organizations established partnerships to lay a solid foundation for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Mr. Christian Ewert, Director General of FTA, said that, the new brand identity of FTA will focus on developing new partnerships to promote and safeguard international trade by providing information and practical solutions for the sustainable development of global supply chain and support its business development.
       
On the morning of June 15, Ms. Lin and Chinese delegation were invited to visit the headquarters of CSR Europe in Brussels, and discussed with Mr. Jan Noteredaeme, the Senior Advisor and co-founder of CSR Europe, on the legislation progress of social responsibility in China and EU. Mr. Noteredaeme hoped to continuously deepen the cooperation of sustainability in the value chain of automobile industry and aviation industry with GoldenBee, and looked forward to much more engagement of CSR Europe in promoting the CSR exchange and experience sharing between China and Europe in the future.
 
In the afternoon, the Chinese delegation also met with Antti Peltomaki, Deputy Director General, Directorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW) to discuss the social responsibility legislation and promotion in Europe and China. Antti Peltomaki mentioned that EU has a very close cooperation with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and MIIT. Mr. Guo Xiuming, the Associate Counsel of Department of Policies, Laws and Regulations, MIIT, also introduced the content of CSR in China Manufacturing 2025 and the work on the building of social responsibility in the field of industry and information, especially in the electronic information industry in recent years.
     
He said that the Chinese government has also put forward China Manufacturing 2025 after raising the five new development concepts: "innovation, coordination, green, open and sharing". MIIT focuses on promoting the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry, from the perspective of CSR, that is, innovation drives quality brand, green brand, and work safety. In general, it is responsible production and a mapping to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. China has a lot of CSR practices. MIIT hopes to support them to carry out these practices and also welcome to strengthen communication and exchanges with EU in the field of social responsibility to create a legal environment featuring incentive for CSR fulfilment while punishment for default.
     
During the communication, Mr. Ewert said that FTA is willing to see China's responsibility to the world, and hopes that the FTA can contribute to more exchanges and cooperation of social responsibility between China and Europe. He also expected that all stakeholders can work together to promote sustainable development with the power of cooperation and release the opportunities of future.