Joshua Wickerham

On November 30, I joined colleagues at the EU China Business Summit in Nanjing, Jiangsu, which dovetailed with the EU-China political meeting.

That day in Nanjing, under support from the Sino-Swedish Corporate Social Responsibility cooperation, AccountAbility launched the report Responsible Competitiveness in China 2009: Seizing the low carbon opportunity for green development.

This from AccountAbility:

Businesses in China are increasingly working with government and civil society to shift markets to reward sustainable development. These responsible business practices are becoming more and more embedded in the country’s emerging green industrial policy and low carbon development pathways. In some areas, China is set to leapfrog into the elite group of global green innovators.

These are some of the highlights from the report ‘Responsible Competitiveness in China 2009: Seizing the low carbon opportunity for green development’, launched at the 5th annual EU-China Business Summit as part of the Swedish EU presidency on 30 November in Nanjing, China.

• Download English report
• Download the Chinese version

The analysis presented in this report shows that China is developing a distinctive low carbon, responsible pathway, namely that:

• Low carbon industrial policies offer Chinese businesses and consumers huge opportunities
• Responsible business ventures in China are now impacting global markets relaunching China’s brand
• Strong government leadership, incentives and supportive policies are playing key roles

The report was independently researched and written in a unique collaboration between AccountAbility and the China WTO Tribune, with support from the Sino-Swedish CSR Cooperation Project. Learn more about the report’s key findings.

The Joint Statement of the 12th EU-China Summit specifically “decided to strengthen high-level dialogue and exchanges between think-tanks from both sides, and to promote and support regular exchanges.” Read the Joint Statement in full. AccountAbility’s partnership with the China WTO Tribune is an example of this kind of knowledge and collaboration exchange.

I took Obama’s visit as a chance to write about how company action should play a more prominent role in the trust building and competitiveness equation of the Sino-US relationship. My Guardian article, A green call to arms, (link to Chinese version here) centers on climate change. Meanwhile, my ChinaDialogue piece, Obama’s China moment (and the Chinese version) addresses wider issues of corporate social responsibility. I focus especially on sustainability standards and other global “rules of the game” that the US and Chinese governments should encourage companies to improve jointly.

Guardian: A green call to arms (Chinese)

ChinaDialogue: Obama’s China moment (Chinese)

This is Fortune China’s 3rd annual survey of Chinese business leaders. This year Fortune surveyed 20,000 people using a survey designed by AccountAbility. The cover this year is much more uplifting than last year’s.

Download the full English version here.

The Chinese version is on Fortune China’s website here.

Here’s the Chinese version of this month’s Fortune China cover story on Chinese attitudes toward responsible business practices, which I co-authored.

I took the photos of the article in the back of the cab in Beijing after a lunch meeting with the editors and uploaded them to my flickr account, so I’m sorry if any pages are hard to read.

Here’s a link to the Fortune China site and article.