Since year 2002, IED/LEAD-China has initiated a project to promote corporate social responsibility in China. As executive partner of DFID program SOERED project, IED/LEAD China implemented CSR work for last two years, we have done some pioneer work to foster mainstreaming CSR.

Through practice and study, we did massive corporate investigation in Sichuan and Liaoning province, organized local corporate social responsibility and enterprise development workshops.

As main foster to promote CSR in China，we have set up good relationship with different partners, in June 2004，we are successful to hold CSR roundtable in Beijing, very productive discussion by representatives from government department, multinational and national companies and NGO. At the meeting we announced a website as a forum to exchange and share information. Also, we published 2 books in 2004, “CSR in China” was seen as first comprehensive reference book that include CSR law and regulation data bank, best practices case studies and literatures review.

We believe CSR as the business contribution to sustainable development. It is essential to collaborate with government, NGOs and business to push implementation of CSR through business takes account of its economic, social and environmental impacts in the way it operates, maximizing the benefits and minimizing the downsides which is the only way towards sustainable economy in China.. These efforts are not only improve the business core competitive advantages, create a better external environment for business development, but also win the pass for Chinese company to the world market.

Training and workshops:

 We have organized several workshops in two provinces involves six cities, to help business senior managers to integrate the CSR and business development into their operation strategy.  As following activities of CSR project, we organized many collaborative activities on CSR in the two SOERED project provinces, including monitoring the level of CSR advice given by SOERED institutions to their clients and investigation of CSR and business strategy.  In 2003, we investigated CSR case studies from SOERED client companies.

Research and networking:

 In academic aspects, we established a series researches on CSR in China, the first report have been worked out is “CSR driving forces in China”, which identified what are the main factors influencing CSR activities in China and recommendation for the future work.  In order to dissemination our CSR work and arouse corporate awareness of responsibility, we set up the CSR China website, which includes CSR Resource Bank on as an information resource center to facilitate updating, exchange and web discussion.  In 2004, we organized A CSR round table for CSR key players in China, communicated with various initiatives to share information and exchange ideas and activities, set up CSR working network in China.

Publications:

 We published the first guidebook “CSR in China”, including very comprehensive literature reference in academic research on this topic, an complete law and regulations collection on corporate social responsibility written in China legal documents, 20 CSR business case studies that we investigated in 2003.  At the end of Sep. 2004, we published a pamphlet called “employee’s rights based on laws and regulations guidebook” to help Chinese workers protecting themselves and let the company to know the legal status of company operation.  At the same time, We developed “CSR Training Manual” for CSR workshop and training ,as SME development in China.