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Citizen reporting
http://www.moobol.com/ms/2193/live219320.shtml#pC 拍摄地点： [湖北•武汉] 2008-10-09 20:19:19

There is a blog called 王浩峰聚焦战报 （Wang Jiefeng Jujiao Zhanbao) that covers a lot of controversial topics that you wouldn’t expect to get through the “Great Firewall” of China. Most recently there was an investigative report on sweatshop labor in Wuhan which can be found at this link: http://www.moobol.com/ms/2193/live219320.shtml#pC 拍摄地点： [湖北•武汉] 2008-10-09 20:19:19. The article goes through a couple of interview with the child laborers and the surrounding residents. For a rough translation (really rough), read below.

The relationship between the media and the government has always fascinated and perplexed me in China. Official media outlets have exposed corruption and environmental problems that have brought about better accountability and justice. However, the media act with the permission of the government at all times and, therefore, what the Chinese media can and cannot cover varies widely from local government to local government. When it comes to citizen investigative reporting I am even more concerned. How does an individual take that daring step? How do they know that they won’t get in trouble? In particular, after looking at this blog, I wonder what kind of relationship the author(s) have with the Wuhan government and if it will turn sour like it did for the investigative environmental reporter Wu Lihong (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/world/asia/14china.html). Nevertheless, seeing this blog up and unrestricted gives more hope for more future investigative journalism in China, which will give more of a participatory voice to China’s civil society sector.

Title: 探访偷拍，揭发武汉令人震惊的童工暗流 Under-cover videotaping exposes a shocking child labor underground.

在武汉，一些黑心老板以儿童作为榨取暴利的劳动工具；一些孩子没日没夜地替他们卖命，流下了一行行辛酸血泪。In Wuhan, a black-hearted boss squeezes profit out of children making them laboring tools. Some children don’t have day or night and no one replaces them while they work themselves to death. Children just shed blood and tears.

接市民反映，《王浩峰聚焦》在9月底10月初，对武汉城乡结合部部分地段进行了探访，目击多少一脸稚气的工人在工厂加班加点顽命干活（他们分布在服装厂/ 印花厂/线厂/拉链厂等厂子劳作）。为了赶活，黑心老板把他们当“机器人”使用，让他们一天只休息6个小时，有的凌晨4时才下班；由于严重的睡眠不足，有的在生产中手指被机器“咬”伤；有的在生产中出了故障，得遭受老板恶语相加责骂；凌晨2时，见身心疲惫的他们在马路边小摊上，卖烧饼宵夜。
After public feedback, “Wen Haofeng Focus” gathered video clips in late September early October from Wuhan’s urban and rural areas. The clips give witness to many childlike faces working overtime. The kids are distributed throughout the workplace in areas such as the garment factory/printing plant/factory lines/zipper factory and other factory work areas. In order to make a living, the boss makes them act like robots causing them to work all day and rest only 6 hours while some work until 4 a.m. As a result of these horrible conditions, many children do not get enough sleep; some have had their fingers caught in the machines (knows as a “bite” injury) and those that make an error are cursed at by their boss. At 2 a.m. you can see their mental and physical exhaustion while they walk on the side of the street to buy sesame cake.

在一服装厂里劳碌的孩童，说他自己是95年3月出生。工头则说他刚15岁。 Talking with some of the children in the factory, one said that he was born in March of 1995. The foreman said he just turned 15.
问孩子每月能拿千把块钱吧。工头回答：“没有这多，有一点”。When the children were asked if they made 1,000 yuan a month, the foreman responded that they didn’t have that much money; only a little.

在一做拖把的工厂，一孩子在不断往拖把棍上套胶套，他说自己被雇佣已有1年时间了，来自湖北浠水，今年刚15岁；每天要套千多根拖棍。一年的工资是5千元。At a mop factory, a child doesn’t stop putting the rubber wrap around the mop’s stick. He says that he has been hired at the factory for a year and that he came from Hubei province’s Xishui. This year he just turned 15 and assembles more than 1,000 mobs a day. He makes 5,000 yuan a year.

周边的居民动情地说，这简直是害性命哪！他们中还有十二三岁的，又有谁能拯救他们呢？每次上面有检查，有人通知工厂做好。风声一过，问题立即还原。The surrounding residents emotionally say that this is a harmful way of life. They still have 12-13 year olds and who can save them? Every time the factory has an inspection they say that the factory is doing a good job. As soon as this type of empty talk goes away, problems go back to their original state.

众所周知，国家是严厉打击雇佣使用童工的非法行为的。只短短几天，《王浩峰聚焦》就从表面上见到这多干活的“娃娃脸”。在武汉城乡结合部到底有多少童工，这还是个未知数。希望相关部门以高度对党/对人民/对祖国的未来负责的态度，予以彻底查清解救，还孩子们金色的童年。还社会的公平正义。As we all know, the government has cracked down on child labor making it illegal. Only in a atter of days the “The Focus of Wang Haofeng” has shown us this many working “baby faces.” How many child laborers does Wuhan’s rural and urban areas contain? This is something we still need to calculate. I hope that relevant departments in the Party/the people/ and the country’s organizations can take a responsible attitude and thoroughly investigate and save these children so they can still have a golden childhood and bring about social justice.

Over the last 5 years, the term CSR has grown from a term that evoked a feeling of philanthropy to become a very large umbrella that encompasses a lot of issues related to how a company works to develop a more socially minded side to its business.  It is a term that many working within the “CSR” arena have begun saying is too big, that like Global Warming, that we are now in a position that we must find means to separate ourselves from “CSR” to more issue based terms like philanthropy, labor, environmental, etc.

Adding confusion to this has been the rise of sustainability.  A topic that is very important, a topic that has traditionally been considered a issue under the CSR umbrella, however many are beginning to wonder if it is time to further develop the definitions of CSR and sustainability as separate issues

In the words of James Leape, Director General of WWF International in a recent conference:

“Sustainability must be a good business proposition, but this is no longer just about corporate social responsibility. We are talking about a new bottom line.”:

Starting this process to redefine these terms (both are actually to large), it is important to understand at a fundamental level where these terms (and their issues) differ.

CSR as defined by the American Chamber of Commerce is:

Can be broadly defined as the concept that corporations should voluntarily commit to ethical, responsible business practices, reflecting the interests of all stakeholders in the company’s policies and actions. Key areas of concern include but are not limited to employee relations, environmental stewardship, community outreach, and corporate governance.

To look at this definition, it is clear that there is a lot packed into “CSR”, however where they all share a common thread is that these are all essentially issues that are (or can be) directly managed by corporate management.  They are everyday issues that should be address in the board room, on the shop floor, and in the surrounding communities.  Corporate governance ties management, legal, and accounting together,  employee relations ties in HR practices, management, and employees, and community outreach mixes the corporate philanthropy and volunteering practices together

Environmental stewardship, for the purposes of this post, is the area that “sustainability” has entered the picture, and it is where further definition needs to occur.

Companies strong in “CSR” do not simply develop and implement a strategy to address these issues, they internalize them as part of their core, a process that can be completed over time as all these issues are actually business issues.

CSR Asia highlighted the a post on the Tianya BBS that presents a pictorial of the conditions found in China’s rural schools.. and at the bottom you will see someone has added some pictures of new government facilities to juxtapose

For those that have not traveled to these places, it will be an eye opener, and it is important to keep in mind that in these areas villages will often only have a single school.  That to complete their education, children sill often need to board in other villages as they move up in schools.

We invest, like you; but, maybe our returns are even greater than yours -actually, in times like these, I am sure they are!

Let me give you an example of one of our investments:

In an Early Childhood Care and Development program we are running in rural China,  we make a $17 return out of our every dollar we invest: this one dollar is to help improve the pre-school education quality for 3 to 6 year-old children in the rural community; and after the children grow up,  there is a 17 dollar return: 0.2 dollar less cost for social Welfare, 0.5 dollar less cost for Education, 4.2 dollars greater income, 0.9 dollar more Taxes paid to the government and 11.3 dollars less cost due to  reduction in Crime.

Let’s come to my name card; I’m no big person though, but what I want to show to you is the logo. A lovely child within the blue circle, being protected as she/he realize his/her potential. That’s us, where children are our centre and whom we invest in. After analyzing those factors that will impact children’s life, within the specific context in Western China, we choose the right project to invest and the right partner to invest with. Take a trip to the western part of China if you have a chance in the future, the country is not all about what you have seen here in Beijing or Shanghai. Over there, Education resources are poor so we build hardware such as school buildings and computers,; we provide training of various kinds (the so called software that often makes a greater difference than the hardware); water is scarce and polluted affecting children’s health so we do our best to build a deep pump well accessing cleaner water for them; families do not have enough financial income to meet their children’s needs so we help improve parents’ business skills and provide microfinance.

It’s about investment in family and community, the origin of all types of organizations including companies. And the return is a lot more than just money, 1 dollar not just for 17 dollars but also for the dignity and potential of a human being, the happiness and hope of a family, the union and development of a rural community. In modern society, calculating currency is an explicit but incomplete way of calculating real life value and improvements; if we revise the standard to be closer to true human nature, social organizations like Plan could probably go to the stock exchange market (well, not this year anyway). We buy and sell in pursuit of the maximization of life ’ssense: love, happiness, sharing and appreciation in life. Although buying and selling in those intangibles might resemble many of the intabgible products that have been traded causing recent problems -but surely these intanibles are worth much more!

Last but not least, I wish all of you enjoy your China trip; there are always more to see and more opportunities to invest in this huge and complex territory and I wish your business here a great success.

I’ve seen many different but similar corporate values. You can always find words like integrity, diversity, transparency or sustainability, most of which always mean much but at the same time mean nothing. There is actually quite weak connection, standing from the perspective of a normal audience, between their values that the corporate presented and their business that the public observed.

There are some better ones but the most impressive one I have ever seen and actually have just seen, is from VISA, an everyone-knows but always neglected fortune 500 company. VISA’s corporate value is Empowering People, Empowering Businesses and Empowering Economies; this is powerful through clearly demonstrating the strong connection of what they say and what they actually do.

At the individual level, VISA empowers many people by allowing them to connect to their resources in as many ways as possible, all in one credit card. Their community investment program is also much based on their value by helping the less advantaged communities through microfinance and financial literacy education program.

At the organizational level, Visa is helping to empower businesses with payment products and services that help boost revenue and drive down costs, extending the benefits of better money to the bottom line. Not just large enterprises, but also a large number of small and medium enterprises would benefit from their service. In its website, it gives a persuasive example of how VISA helps a baker to evolve from a wholesale-based retailer to a direct seller through provideing the necessary cash engine and managing his receipts and expenses more efficiently.

At the society level, VISA indeed plays an important role in increasing efficiency and stimulating economic growth. With VISA, every one of us would like to spend more and more money, on things beyond our control! But it is definitely good for the macro economy.

You can find more information from their website: http://corporate.visa.com/av/about_visa/vov/main.jsp

Over at Yale 360, Christina Larson has written an article entitled China’s New Environmental Advocates that highlights the Centre for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims and some of the core issues that exist in enforcing China’s environmental laws.

The challenge of coordinating environmental enforcement across multiple levels of government — with central authorities often looking at the long-term picture, while regional officials remain more concerned about quick economic gains and local protectionism — is not unique to China.

Founded in 1998, and based in Beijing, Xu and a colleague brought together Centre for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims as a means to correct what they felt they needed to put their academic knowledge of China’s environmental laws to use

to date, Xu says:

The center’s staff has taken up more than 80 cases: They’ve won a third, lost a third, and a third are still pending.

One of those pending cases involves a case of where industrial pollution has contaminated the water of villagers.  It is a case where villagers felt the effects immediately:

from vomiting and migraine headaches, to diminished rice yields and dead cattle. They came to believe the factory’s sooty emissions and waste water dumped into the local water supply, the Xiang River, were the source of these problems.

The villagers first appealed to the factory owner to install more stringent pollution-control equipment. Then they brought their concerns to the local environmental authorities. But by the summer of 2004, little had changed. So the villagers turned to force to shut the factory down — twice storming the grounds to rip its power-supply unit off the wall. Each time, plant operations halted temporarily, while repairs were made, but the factory was back online within a week.

Today Xu is preparing a lawsuit against the local environmental protection bureau, which green-lighted the factory’s faulty environmental impact statement. If successful, the lawsuit will force the factory to shut down until it meets environmental standards

In the west we have a long range of jokes about the role of lawyers, and their role within our society, however through this example it is clear that going forward the role of lawyers will become more important as China’s civil society develops.

Last Monday, 22 September in Beijing there is a Policy Forum on Mainstreaming NGOs in Government Poverty Programs organized by the highest central government agency for poverty alleviation, State Council LGOP (Leading Group for Poverty Alleviation and Development).

The discussion is about a new key direction for the state anti-poverty programs in PRC, in which government and non-governments are working together to demonstrate efficient poverty alleviation model. The forum introduces a pilot test recently completed in three poor counties in Jiangxi Province where budgetary funds have been channeled to competitively-selected NGOs to work under the government’s flagship grassroots-level poverty reduction program.

‘The State Council LGOP sees NGOs as central to addressing the new face of poverty in PRC’, which is said in the news release, though during the discussion some government official did emphasize it’s important to select the correct NGO partners who are aligned with its direction and have no political purpose.

LGOP views the pilot as taking key step in actualizing calls in the 2001-2010 Chinese Rural Poverty Alleviation and Development Outline for NGO participation in the implementation of the government poverty programs. Some innovative points in this outline are such as adopting participatory methodology and partnering with NGOs.

With strong support from MoF, LGOP sought technical assistance from ADB to development test workable models for NGO-government at the village level. China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation oversaw the implementation of the project’s pilot test, launched in Dec. 2005. At the grassroots level, the project involved nice consortia of competitively-selected NGOs(one is international(Heifer), the rest of nine are all local or Chinese NGOs), which facilitated a village-driven planning process to allocate RMB500,000 of state poverty funds per village for projects, ranging from village roads to drinking water and training.

There are some concrete results out of this NGO-Government partnership such as:

• Management procedures of involvement of civil society in public service were systematically experimented and created.
• The capacity of NGOs involved was improved
• The rate of participation of villagers, including women and poor people is significantly higher in pilot villages compared with others
• NGOs could well target the poor people and involve them in decision-making
• The poverty reduction planning improves the relationship between village committees and villagers and thus promoted the public credibility.
• Participation of NGOs in poverty reduction planning at village level transformed the functions/role of the local government and improved government working capacity

All of which sounds exciting, yet pros and cons exist together. Some participants in forum also raised some concerns such as:

• This bottom-top approach will alleviate the actual power of government bureau, what’s their motivation in this and how to motivate them?
• Though the process sounds very participatory such as the competitively-selection process, what is the actual result? Is this selection process still somehow dominated.
• It’s still a challenging for funding allocation through the Public Finance system, though in this specific project actually for the first time government allow China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation to open a separate account. Usually, it takes about two years to transfer poverty reduction funding from Centre to Provincial, from Provincial to Municipal, from Municipal to County, and finally from County to Villages.
• The limit of NGOs’ actual capacity might go against the original expectation of the government which might restrict rather than foster the future partnership with government if any unsuccessful case. It is about the management of the right expectation from government when NGOs are creating their promises.
• In this partnership, selected different NGOs are allocated to different village randomly without taking into consideration of their expertise. NGO itself has different focus on development and how to leverage different NGO’s expertise and make a good portfolio?

The UK Department for International Development provided ADB 1M USD in financing for the technical assistance under the Poverty Reduction Cooperation Fund, while Singapore RGM International(a multinational company) provided roughly USD 80,00 to support capacity building for NGOs working under the project.

In July 2008, GEI was invited, together with seven other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), to select a bank to be awarded with the Innovation Award for Green Banks in the 2007 Competition for China’s Best Banks, organized by the Economic Observer. The award is the first such award for “green” banks in China, and is also the first award in China for which the organization and selection was performed entirely by NGOs. The competition has been pioneer in encouraging banks and other financial institutions to participate in environmental protection activities.

We asked Mr. Zhi Yingbiao, GEI’s Environmental Policy Program Officer and participant in the award selection, to share with us his thoughts on the award.

“As a representative of GEI, I was honored to participate in the selection of the Innovation Award for Green Banks. As I see it, there are three main reasons why the award was set up. First, the award speaks to the development needs of the banks themselves. Second, it was the result of a great effort by the NGOs involved in its organization and implementation.. Finally, it arose to some extent out of pressure from international society.

In recent years, as China has been increasing its overseas investment, criticisms from western countries of environmental problems caused by China’s overseas investment have also been increasing. To my knowledge, the environmental criteria for China’s overseas investments and aid programs are different primarily because of the differences in invested countries’ policies and laws. However, it is undeniable that the Chinese banking industry needs urgently to regulate, from the top, Chinese banks’ and companies’ environmental behaviors during their overseas investments. By doing this, it will not only address the criticisms made by western countries of China’s overseas enterprises, but will also help Chinese banks and companies become more competitive by avoiding environmental risks. The Innovation Award for Green Banks is only a beginning. We hope the Chinese banking industry can issue environment-friendly criteria that are both internationally acceptable and reflect the reality of the situation facing Chinese companies operating overseas.

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There is an interesting article from a fundraising agency which talks about Economic Conditions and Philanthropy that states

“When the economic news is dark and the winds of recession bluster about, concern about the implications for philanthropy and fundraising are natural.”

Based on data of the US philanthropy market in the past forty years, this article analyzes five incontrovertible facts that proves ‘historically, philanthropy has always remained strong – and that over time, it continues to grow.’ you can find the full article link here:

This doesn’t necessarily mean the current financial crisis in the States won’t impact the philanthropy world though. Even in China some iNGOs, which accept donation from multinationals, could possibly be impacted by the current turmoil in the financial market. Some iNGOs have already experienced unsustainable relationships with some corporate foundations which don’t exist any more, due to frequent Merge and Acquisition happening in industries; and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers is creating another story how some of its NGO partners might have to experience in terms of the continuity of some specific corporate funded development programs.

One former McKinsey report has shown the philanthropy giving in China in the past few years was quite limited compared with other countries. The earthquake has changed the situation much with tremendous donations from both of individuals and organizations; at the same time, corporate social responsibility has now become an even more popular topic nationwide. But the question is: will this phenomenon continue in the next few years and how much of future giving could come from individuals?

The article writes:

Philanthropy is about individual giving behavior. The giving behavior of individuals is only partially related to the behavior of the economy.’

A more stable status of philanthropy environment is built up at the individual level rather at the organizational level. However, in China the society is still lacking of a general phenomenon of individual giving, as well as available channels for individual giving.

In that case, the economy conditions in China might have a larger impact on philanthropy in China than in US; we don’t know how the author will write about the same topic in the social context of China, but it’s definitely interesting for us to think about it.