On June 18th 2008, China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTAC) officially launched the China Sustainability Reporting-Guidelines for Apparel and Textile Enterprises (CSR-GATEs) and 2007 Social Responsibility of the Chinese Textile and Apparel Industry Annual Report in Beijing. Madame Ou Xinqian, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), attended the launching event and made an important speech. Officials and experts from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and other government agencies, representatives from international organizations and enterprises participated in this event. Mr. Du Yuzhou, President of CNTAC, gave a closing remark. CNTAC Vice President Chen Shujin, Yang Donghui, Gao Yong, Sun Ruizhe and Xu Wenying, and directors of sub-organizations affiliated to CNTAC were present. Yan Yan, Deputy Director of the Office for Social Responsibility of CNTAC chaired this event.
In her speech, the CSR promotion efforts of CNTAC in recent years were highly regarded and recognized by Madame Ou Xinqian, Vice Minister of MIIT. “In recent years, textile industry has been the champion among Chinese manufacturing industries in promoting social responsibility. Focusing on industry self-discipline, with “people-oriented” as the core concept, and aiming to improve productivity, CNTAC has organized and implemented many well-planed projects and achieved significant outcomes. These include developing CSC9000T, the CSR management system for Chinese textile industry in 2005; launching the first CSC9000T pilot projects and publishing the first industrial social responsibility annual report in 2006; and kicking-off the “10+100+1000” pilot project among textile industrial clusters in 2007. All these activities not only contribute to the improvement of management efficiency and core competence, but also create positive stimuli to the restructuring and upgrading of Chinese textile industry.” In addition, “the launch of the second annual report and the CSR-GATEs marks that the social responsibility reporting mechanism has been officially established at both industrial level and corporate level. It also highlights that the industry’s social responsibility promotion efforts are long term sustainable. It is another innovative achievement of CNTAC in the field of social responsibility development that has significant importance and provides positive examples not only to textile industry, but also to other manufacturing industries in China.”
Meanwhile, Madame Ou particularly pointed out that “the emphasis on the new approach to industrialization should focus on achieving ‘high technology, good economic return, low resources consumption, low environmental pollution, and optimal use of human capital’. This is the true meaning of the new approach to industrialization where the essence is to make social responsibility long term sustainable. The manufacturing industries should focus on not only what products to manufacture, but also how these products are manufactured, and how to become environmental friendly and maintain harmonious labor relations. The development of responsible supply chain depends on not only the quality and performance of the products themselves, but also social values of these products when consumed. And a healthy and sustainable working behavior should also be actively promoted.”
Mr. Du Yuzhou, President of CNTAC, further illustrated the significance of promoting social responsibility among the industry in his speech. “Enterprises that implement CSC9000T management system have been well recognized by stakeholders. Their achievements demonstrate that the improvement of productivity and the promotion of social responsibility are mutually beneficial. It is a natural solution to enhance the competitiveness of enterprises following the scientific development strategy, to improve the competiveness of the country, to allow better synergy between innovation and comparative advantage, and to satisfy the needs of both enterprise and its employees. Furthermore, its success requires a realistic and pragmatic attitude, and lean management.”
Mr. Du also emphasized that “our social responsibility promotion work has achieved significant results and passed important milestones with active supports and cooperation from relevant parties. However, as a project of historic importance, our achievement should only be viewed as preliminary in both depth and coverage. Severe challenges still remain. In particular, the changing environment, domestic and abroad, has great impacts on our profit-making capability, and also influences our efforts to implement social responsibility. As a result, we need to continue our work with greater efforts.”
Mr. Sun Ruizhe, Vice President of CNTAC and Director of the Office for Social Responsibility, made the following remarks when launching CSR-GATEs: “Based on the CSC9000T Management System of the Chinese textile industry and relevant government industrial policies and regulations, CSR-GATEs provides a guideline with comprehensive and quantifiable indicators to enterprises that are willing to publish social responsibility reports. It aims to help enterprises voluntarily compile and publish reports on their economic, environmental and social performance of business operations, products and services. CNTAC encourages all textile and apparel enterprises to follow CSR-GATEs when preparing their social responsibility reports.”
It was introduced that CSR-GATEs contained an indicator system that consisted of 201 indicators covering business production, operation and management activities with high relevance to stakeholders. It was the first indicator system and protocol regarding social responsibility reporting in China, as well as the first industrial guideline for corporate disclosure on social responsibility performance.
During this event, CNTAC also released 2007 Social Responsibility of the Chinese Textile and Apparel Industry Annual Report. This was the second annual report published by CNTAC. Compared with the first one published in 2006, the 2007 annual report made progress in launching event design, content comprehensiveness, and information quantity. In addition, the 2007 annual report had consulted with opinions from various stakeholders during its compilation process.
In reviewing corporate social responsibility promotion work among the textile and apparel industry in the last several years, Mr.Sun said: “With regard to supply chain cooperation, the fundamental idea to encourage positive participation in long term CSR development from enterprises is to decrease and eventually eliminate factory auditing. This requires further international communications and collective efforts of all stakeholders along the supply chain.”
“Meanwhile, the development of social responsibility needs further transparency. The stakeholders’ evaluation on corporate social responsible performance calls for greater transparence and information sharing mechanism, i.e. social responsibility reporting. To further improve the attitudes towards reporting among the industry, CNTAC plans to launch the Sustainability Report Evaluation System for Chinese Textile |
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