There is no doubt CEOs can write and sign wonderful sounding introductions to their CSR/Citizenship reports and make many claims and fill a report with plenty of good examples and statistics. There is a doubt about whether this means anything in reality, and although Enron used to be quoted as the example of a sustainable company that went wrong, a better example is now BP -some of the best CSR reports and then a huge mistake leading to deaths and law suits. It is, simply, not easy implementing CSR -indeed we could all argue over what CSR is for hours, let alone how to implement it. Ultimately what this means is that a company like Nestle can have a great CSR Report and do some, truly, fantastic work on water, with communities, with employees etc in certain countries, yet others may not be the same. Ultimately pressure to make money and sell more is going to make companies like Nestle and BP, will decide what the culture of the organisation is. CEOs in these companies put, and justifiably so, profits first. Unfortunately this means short-term profits, because they are listed companies and this affects whether they can truly focus on being an ethical business or not. In a Chinese context there are even more challenges integrating CSR into the culture of a business and companies like China Mobile will face challenges dealing with:. -Corruption, influence, connections and incentive systems in China which are very different to those elsewhere -Size and scale of their corporations, bearing in mind the extensive reach of these companies and the conflicting regional political pressures in regional subsidiaries -Admitting failure, due to the nature of Chinese media and reporting in general which is overwhelmingly positive -Prioritizing, due to the ownership structure of Chinese companies and important influence the government has and their change of priorities -Transparency, since there is very little civil society or a critical media that can highlight issues -especially in Chinese companies overseas’ work, of which very little is known of, within China. Additionally, many companies struggle to provide reliable statistics, internally, let alone externally. However, there are certain reasons to be more positive for Chinese companies in China because: -It is clear the difficulties China faces and with close involvement with local government, the government can ensure the companies meet local needs and deal with local sustainability issues -There is a strong top-down culture ensuring orders tend to be obeyed -There is experience of rolling out successful innovations in processes and programs, quickly, and scaling up As we report on more and more improvements in Chinese companies’ CSR Reports, we will see them getting better and better and the challenge for us is to try to understand what the reality is (the same challenges we face with non-Chinese companies) and to understand how Chinese companies can really integrate responsible business practices within their businesses to benefit stakeholders.