Corporate Social Responsibility, Presented Simply
Last week, Wokai officially launched its microfinance platform to provide support to rural entrepreneurs in China with a focus on women. The platform which has been in Beta in the last months has already attracted more than 200 contributors!
Definitely an organization to watch.
Wokai Website: Here
Wokai Blog: Here
Not Just Bags & Watches
Not just limited to imitation Louis Vuitton Handbags and Rolex Watches, the “Culture of Fake” in China is soaring in Popularity across a whole spectrum of Consumer Goods.
Tough Times
In tougher economic times when “The Real Thing” is increasingly out of reach of your average Chinese consumer, many are taking to “ShanZhai” (as the culture of fake/imitation goods has been called) products which its proponents insist are “Just as Good”.
Intellectual Property Rights
This will present a large problem for International Brands, who have been looking to enforce their intellectual property rights in China, as these “ShanZhai” brands grow in popularity in their own right.
Will SQNY replace SONY?
Will ADADAS (or ADIDOS) outsell ADIDAS?
Will KFG move more chicken that KFC?
Original Reuters Article: Link Here
More Examples of Funny and Clever “Shanzhai”: ChinaSmack
An Interesting Post about Apples with Chinese Characters “Grown” into them: AaronFu.com
Today, at CECPA in Beijing released details of the research being conducted for China’s Carbon Balance Trading Framework Report. A report that its chairman, Pan Yue, hopes will nudge China on its way towards a Low Carbon Economy, a goal which he describes as a major breakthrough required for China to build an ecological civilisation.
CECPA Press Conference
After carefully looking at the successful experience of leading nations in this field, the project team tasked with this piece of critical research have put forward their recommendation of implementing a “Carbon Source- Carbon Sink” trading system between Chinese provinces. The researchers also suggest that carbon be used as a rigid target for the monitoring, identification and control of economic activity.
We are looking at clean energy and environmentally-friendly investment (…) everything cross-border except for casinos, tobacco companies or machine-gun companies
Gao Xiqing, China Investment Corporation’s (CIC) President, announced the fund’s intentions to consider responsible and sustainable investment policies at a conference in Beijing on June 13th
This announcement follows another recent speech the CIC President made at an OECD conference earlier this month stressing the SWF’s commitment to transparency. He assured delegates that CIC will be “as transparent as required by any law in any country” but continued with words of caution about expectations of rapid changes,
Our government has never been transparent for 5,000 years (…) we are trying.
As China based the structure of CIC ($200bn) on Singapore’s Temasek Holdings ($159bn) it will not be inconceivable that it has looked at Norway’s Government Pension Fund (NBIM), widely acknowledged as one of the most transparent SWFs, for guidance in improving its practices.
Some of NBIM’s guidelines might prove a challenge for a country with China’s (less than stellar) ethical record to put into practice.
NBIM utilises negative screening to exclude investments that pose a reasonable risk of the fund contributing to:
The good news is that the CIC’s $90bn foreign investment mandate precludes it from investing these funds in the Chinese government.
[Note: Norway has received some attention in the press for applying these principal's harshly on its foreign investment candidates while turning a practically blind eye to Norwegian corporations that engage in activity abroad that would violate those very same principals.]
If adopting Norway’s ethical guidelines seems like too much of a stretch for the CIC in the near future, perhaps it could turn back to Temasek, after all, even without any clearly published policies regarding responsible or sustainable investment, they might have decided that all you need is a great team of graphic designers (meritocratically chosen of course).
Hostility?
Still young (CIC only began operations in September 2007), but already attracting much attention with its high profile investments in Blackstone ($3bn) and Morgan Stanley ($5bn). During its negotations to take a stake in Citigroup, as Wall Street turned to Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) as sources of capital during the subprime saga, however, some of this attention was (in the United States at least) unapologetically negative and protectionist.
Why is it good for a foreign government to have 10% stock of Citigroup when we don’t want to have the US government have 10%? At least the US government would be responsible to US taxpayers.
Edwin Truman, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former US Treasury Department Official.
This hostility could hurt the United States, China has previously highlighted that it could easily abandon its push to invest in US assets and focus on countries that do welcome its large pool of capital, like the United Kingdom.
[Note: Citigroup went on to acquire capital not from CIC but from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) and the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA)]
China will experience a mini-revolution come Sunday, as the much anticipated (or dreaded, depending on which side of the fence you’re on) as the National Ban on Free Plastic Bags takes effect.
Though not a world first (Ireland implemented a 12 cent plastic bag tax in August 2002), it is a significant further sign that the Chinese Central Government is taking environmental issues seriously. Also, we should remember that this law (if successful) will reduce the plastic bag consumption of 1.3 Billion people (20% of the world’s population) by mandating that stores charge customers between 0.2 – 2.0 RMB (3 – 30 cents) per plastic bag.
Brits are prepared for it. Retailers like Marks & Spencer have reacted and introduced a 5 pence fee for plastic bags at their supermarkets. Hopefully setting a precedent, as Hong Kong supermarket chain Park ‘n’ Shop did when it started asking shoppers to pay 20 HK cents for plastic bags in November last year.
In Australia, Peter Garret MP (former frontman of the rock band Midnight Oil), a leading proponent of initiatives to reduce plastic bag use in the country seems to have lost federal support for a rumoured national $1 tax on plastic bags. There is however a chance that state governments, might continue exploring a $1 tax as a means of reducing plastic bag use.
As for America, where 100 billion shopping bags are used a year, things do not look optimistic, especially if you believe this WorldWatch spokesman’s claim that “The mentality in America is plastics bags come from plastic bag land. We don’t think about where they come from and where they’re going.”
JOBS: CSR & Sustainability
