I’ve been watching Olympics coverage on NBC like a fiend. It’s an addiction. Those dramatic intros, that heart-pulsing music, those bite-size pieces of sports footage and that occasionally dorky commentary by Bob Costas–it’s pure entertainment. And let’s face it, I have Phelps Phever. I even friended him on Facebook.

And those commercials! I practically shed a tear when I watch some of them (though, some of them make me laugh, i.e. Morgan Freeman: “Michael Phelps isn’t part dolphin” for Visa’s Go World campaign.)

Image from Visa Go World campaign

Speaking of which, have you noticed GE’s Ecomagination spots? Read more about the initiative from our blogger Sophia. Or watch the videos yourself here. The company said “it sold $700 million in products because of the Olympics.”

Image from GE's Ecomagination campaign

And have you seen ExxonMobil’s CSR ads? The media awareness campaign, part of the company’s partnership in a worldwide initiative called Roll Back Malaria, focuses on the prevention of malaria in Africa.

Check out the Technology, Health & Development blog for a good post about how this commercial is one of this year’s Olympic successes:

In our previous post on this olympian ad, I think Rob Katz from Acumen put perfectly:

“It’s great to see Exxon Mobil spending as much as $750,000 to promote its social responsibility efforts around malaria. What’s even better is that Steven Phillips - who appears in the commercial - makes it a point to say that malaria isn’t just a CSR initiative for Exxon. Rather, it’s a business continuity issue - if Exxon’s workers are sick, the company loses money. Having a productive workforce is serious business, and Exxon appears to be serious about large scale malaria prevention activities, including insecticide-treated net distribution and even indoor residual spraying…”

This strategy is a good example of the “new CSR,” in which companies align their socially responsible values with their business strategy, so that it actually makes money to “do good,” rather than just dishing out philanthropic funding for tangential causes or marketing their products in such a way to seem more ethical.

In China, the oil and gas giant supports training in computer and life skills to low-income girls in rural areas through the aptly named Practical Skills Training Center for Rural Women. How does this make business sense for the company? Because “ExxonMobil relies on technology and innovation” and employees thousands of engineers and scientists across the world, according to its 2007 Corporate Citizenship Report. Essentially, the company is training its future workforce, and in the process, possibly establishing customer loyalty and a positive reputation. And in China, where ExxonMobil has massive operations, this is critical to its success.

Image via DayLife.com

Sounds like ExxonMobil has a strong commitment to education, corporate governance, employees’ rights and other social and labor conditions. The Business Roundtable published a report about this, called “Corporate Social Responsibility in China: Practices by U.S. Companies.” The company holds periodic employee training and reviews about its policies, publishes ethical and business standards in Chinese, and hosts Chinese business and government representatives to tour their global facilities.

Is anyone familiar with ExxonMobil’s impact on China’s environment?

According to a recent article in the Financial Post, the global corporation has received much criticism “for not showing leadership to combat global warming, with some arguing it is putting shareholders’ capital at risk by not moving into greener energy.” And you might be interested to know that “Rex Tillerson, chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp., came out swinging against the environmental movement, arguing the science of climate change is far from settled and that his company views it as its ‘corporate social responsibility’ to continue to supply the world with fossil fuels.”

Image via ToddAlbert.com

Although ExxonMobil has been known to be one of the most high-profile critics of global warming science, it also seems to be softening its stance on the issue. Here is a summary of the company’s official views on the issue:

This includes putting policies in place that start us on a path to reduce emissions, while understanding the context of managing carbon emissions among other important world priorities, such as economic development, poverty eradication and public health.

While this long-term objective is pursued, near-term objectives should include supporting climate research while pacing policy responses; promoting energy efficiency; deploying existing technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and supporting research and development of new, low-GHG technologies.

(Image via The Economist)

There isn’t a blog out there who hasn’t reminded us that green is the color of money and trees, can be turned to ‘gold,’ or found in ‘red’ China.

Green isn’t enough anymore, though, because now we have a new color scheme to overuse—blue, like the color of water. Coco-Cola, and other companies, like General Electric, are starting to use water in their China CSR platforms because countries they operate in, like China (and the rest of the  world for that matter) don’t have enough of it. Water is also a natural fit for Coca-Cola’s CSR focus since the company has come under fire for poor practice–apparently, it takes 2.5 liters of water to make just one liter of its product.

Then consider how much water is required to host the Olympic games, plus the fact that the host city has a water shortage but is run by a government who is bound to provide clean water at any cost.

What you come out with is a very sensible move by Coca-Cola to put water and China in the center of their CSR stage.  As the company’s manager of environmental issues said, “we need to manage this issue, or it will manage us.”

In a speech in Beijing, Coca-Cola’s CEO E. Neville Isdell stood next Chinese government representatives and pledged to reduce, recycle and replenish the water they use for their product. One of the ways the will do this is by partnering with WWF in a multi-million dollar, long-term, international CSR program to help clean up China’s critical river, the Yangtze. Check out Rich Brubaker’s analysis of Coke’s initiatives on China Crossroads: “Is Coke Doing Enough? - Part 1.”

Ideally, the program in China will help Coca-Cola in the following ways:

• Manage and support two watersheds on the Yangtze. (Watersheds are important because they carry rain and melted snow down to rivers, so what happens to the watershed affects water quality downstream for everyone.)
• Help Chinese bottling plants develop better water use and stewardship practices. (Coca-Cola has run into trouble before about how much water they use in their bottling plants in Third World countries.)
• Work with other industries and water users along the Yangtze. (Chinese industry and society depend on the quality of water in the Yangtze, which is heavily polluted.)

Read more about China’s water problems on the China blog, All Roads Lead to China (thanks Rich!). On a slightly different note, check out this creepy–and wasteful–Olympic souvenir fish key chain.

More interesting articles:

• Water is Beijing’s dirty little Olympics secret
  MSNBC
• China Diverting Major River to “Water” Beijing Olympics
  National Geographic

“On television the Olympics looks like an athletic event, but on location it’s a big business convention,” says president of a brand research firm to the New York Times, explaining why corporations are putting so much money into the 2008 games.

Sponsoring the Olympics is a long-term, expensive deal for companies, but they do it because their logo is seen all over the world in connection to an international, historic and hopefully peaceful event.

Unfortunately, the lead-up to the Olympics has been far from peaceful. The Olympic torch, the symbol of the Games, needed Chinese cops in tracksuits to stop it from being dosed by protesters. And superstars like Hillary Clinton, George Clooney and Steven Spielberg protest against China and corporate sponsors for human rights and geo-political reasons.

The last thing any company wants is a connection to a China controversy. So to avoid that they are focusing on Beijing’s theme of greening the 2008 Olympics. They explain their efforts through environmentally friendly initiatives, campaigns, products, exhibits, displays — just about anything else that you can broadcast to the world that Olympic sponsorship is a solid CSR move.

This is the first post of a series that will detail various multinationals sponsoring the Olympics.

• General Electric

GE’s environmental campaign, Ecomagination, is already big in China, getting bigger, and the Olympics is a chance for GE to shine in China and abroad (like in America, where GE-owned and -integrated NBC has exclusive broadcasting rights). GE has outfitted 37 competition venues and hundreds of Beijing’s buildings with energy saving and water recycling technology from their Ecomagination product line. And the Ecomagination center — “a two-story building that is half fun house, half museum exhibit” — in the middle of the Olympic green is an exhibit for Ecomagination products.

You know the iconic building you see on all the ads that looks like a bird’s nest, hence the name “Bird’s Nest”? GE will be lighting it up with special low energy LED bulbs. That is just one of over 335 infrastructure projects that they company is doing for the Beijing Games.

As the “official provider of water treatment facilities and survives,” a number of GE’s initiatives focuses on China and water. All of these products, services, and solutions are being called Ecomagination products, marketed under the banner of a green 2008 Olympics. Some of these solutions include the following:

- Donating water treatment technology for Dongguan and its surrounding villages. This should be improving not only GE’s green Olympic image, but also its government relations. The company is working with the Ministry of Water Resources.

-Selling China’s first advanced membrane rainwater recycling system for the National Stadium to manage all the water the building and surrounding area is going to take.

- Providing a type of water recycling system in Qinghe Water Reclamation Plant.

A focus on water makes sense for an Olympics being held in China, a country with a serious water problem looming, if not already here.

As one CEO at GE said, “We see the Olympic[s] as an essential means to communicate with the local market in China…our ‘Ecomagination’ strategy perfectly matches Beijing’s promise of holding a ‘Greener Olympics.’”

GE is selling and donating the know-how to put green into their Olypmic CSR platform. For any country operating in China that has anything to do with water, it makes sense to preserve this crucial natural resource. GE is not the only one focusing on water. Coca-Cola is up next.

Stay tuned for our next corporate profile in a future ResponsibleChina post.

Check out my recent post on WorldChanging.com about the NEST collective, co-founded by Jeff Delkin and Rachel Speth of bambu, a renewable bamboo kitchenware and utensils company based in Shanghai. Stay tuned for an upcoming ResponsibleChina podcast about bambu’s vision of “responsible manufacturing.”

Proudly Made in China: NEST collective
WorldChanging Team
May 27, 2008

A group of foreigners doing business in Shanghai recently hatched a new idea to bring “design with a conscience” to the China market. NEST, as the retail collective is called, aims to unite “intelligent design” with “responsible manufacturing” through collaboration among eight different brands selling sustainable products, including Wobabybasics organic baby clothes; AOO recyclable furniture; and Jooi Design home decor and fashion accessories. The project is sponsored by Hu & Hu, a Chinese antiques company, and Arabica Roasters, suppliers of organic, fair-trade coffee.

(Image via  Small Worlds Magazine)

We are all bombarded with information about our “footprint” and how big and bad it is. But what exactly are we supposed to be doing with this information in China, a country where “green” can be few and far between?

Two groups, Shanghai Roots & Shoots and SCMC, a Coca-Cola vendor, are working together to reduce Shanghai’s carbon footprint by planting the right kind of trees in the right kind of places. “Tree planting” is based on the idea that trees can reduce the threat of global warming because they basically suck up carbon and other greenhouse gases (GHG) in the air. While no one is pretending that you can plant trees and negate your impact on the earth, it is an example of what China can do to acknowledge its environmental impact and make a quantitative change. Shanghai Roots & Shoots raises money and awareness for the tree planting program and then purchases trees from a nursery in Inner Mongolia. The organization plants pine and poplar trees, which scientists and biologists have certified as appropriate for the area.

The trees benefit the earth in the following ways:

• rehabilitate the eco-system in the area
• stop desertification
• help alleviate local poverty

The Shanghai Roots & Shoots tree planting program is responsible for guaranteeing that local farmers are supplied with seedlings and that they are then responsible for re-planting the trees they cut down, after 20 years, in order to guarantee there is a new tree in its place for up to a 50 year period.

In April, SCMC sponsored two trips involving a total of 28 Shanghaiers, who planted more than 2,000 poplar trees in the Kulunqi desert. As one SCMC rep said, “Coca-Cola Bottlers Manufacturing Co Ltd is…addressing environmental concerns on multiple fronts - holding back desertification, carbon offsetting, sustainable local economic rejuvenation that compliments the environmental objectives and finally environmental education.” In one corner of China at least, tree planting is firmly on the CSR menu.

For more information about the Roots & Shoots program, please visit www.jgi-shanghai.org.

Christopher C. Pinney, director of executive education for the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship, recently wrote about his CSR-focused trip to China, in “Why China Will Define the Future Corporate Citizenship.” He argues that China needs to continue to embrace corporate social responsibility to solve some of the biggest problems facing the country and the world, both social and environmental.

He emphasizes that if CSR is going to do all the wonderful things we know it can, its going have to be in China’s own style.

The challenge now is defining a “made in China” approach to corporate citizenship that respects the norms and values that underpin Chinese society while at the same time addressing global expectations and values.

He defines CSR as much deeper than greening China-based supply chains that big cooperations like Wal-Mart do, but acknowledges that this is going to happen China’s way.

He continues with a very optimistic view of China’s interest in CSR.

The government, business, and academic leaders we have met with recognize that the immense social, environmental, and economic challenges facing the country cannot be solved by government alone and will require the active participation of the rapidly growing domestic private sector and the foreign funded enterprises operating in China.

(I would be interested to learn more about specific examples he encountered on his trip).

He sites China’s economic and population numbers to explain the effects China’s participation in sustainability, or lack their of, could have on international scale.

With almost 21% of the world’s population (1.3 billion people) the sheer scale of the Chinese development model can be difficult to comprehend. It will build 500 coal-fired power plants in the next decade; at the rate of almost one a week.

While there are plenty of very true and impressive statistics like this, Pinney does not acknowledge China’s already established and growing power on the international stage over issues like climate change, environmental protection, labor rights, and human rights. Pointing out China’s geo-political muscle could strengthen Pinney’s argument that the morals China attaches to its business are going to affect us all, for generations to come.

He continues by noting what China is doing to compete in the international market:

To position China to compete in the global economy, leading business schools there are already making English the language of instruction and China will need to build 800 universities by 2015 to keep up with demand.

A fair enough point, but again I would point to China’s already accumulated power. Perhaps an equally relevant statistic would be the increasing number of native English and Spanish speaking children all learning Chinese in schools.

He continues noting “the flip side of this rapid growth” is a list of ills including:

• slavery
• toxic rivers
• air pollution
• a growing gap between the rich and the poor

Pinney flows on with the solutions China’s government is offering for these problems, focusing on the central government’s “harmonious society” theme and accompanying legislation, including, but not limited to:

• Increasing per capita income levels
• Creating more employment opportunities
• Improving the social security system and alleviating poverty
• Raising income levels and living standards in rural and urban areas
• Boosting the quality of housing, transport, public health, and the environment

Harmonious society legislation, in short, creates and keeps a stable society and country. That means addressing environmental issues brought on by China’s rapid development. Pinney continues:

Under the broad rubric of building a harmonious society, the national government and many regional governments are working to create an “enabling” environment that encourages voluntary initiatives by business that address the social, environmental and economic interests of the entire country.

In general, the idea of a harmonious society as a policy framework shifts the focus of development from centralized control to greater participation and multi-stakeholder involvement, and from a premium on economic growth to overall societal balance, including environmental stability and social equality.

It is true that the propaganda is shifting from pure emphasis on economic growth to an overall balance.

Though I think Pinney goes too far by calling it a “shift away from centralized control to greater participation and multi-stakeholder involvement.” At least, I would like to learn more about cases that substantiate this claim. Factory owners and businesses make their improvements at the “urging” tone the central government sets and stay well within their themes, as they should.

Pinney does hit on one of the big problems around here, one the central government readily acknowledges:

One of the current problems faced by governments, local and national, is while often there are laws in place, there are many problems with compliance and enforcement. Interpretation of laws is also often left up to regional governments.

He continues on by marking China’s development and improvement in this area:

To try and address these issues the national government introduced an amended company law in 2006 that expands on the social responsibilities of companies. It provides that a company, in conducting its business, must not only abide by the law, but also observe industry ethics, strengthen the development of the socialist spiritual civilization, and subject itself to supervision by the government and the public.

A new labor contract law (LCL) that took effect January 1, 2008, created in response to rising social unrest and income inequality, requires that all firms of more than 25 people allow unions and ensures some basic labor rights for employees.

In addition to these legal measures it seems like every ministry has some form of corporate citizenship or CSR initiative underway, but there is often little coordination between them. The National Development Research Council of the State Council of the PRC, a key policy body, has more recently taken a proactive interest in coordination of information on CSR initiatives as well as training.

These are tangible actions. Though I don’t think these are examples of moving away from central control to anything like a popular people’s movement. Quite the opposite, in fact, if we use the examples he gives above.

Luckily for all of us, whether decentralized or not, there are CSR movements beyond government initiatives. Pinney details “independent” business initiatives, academic programs and schools, and management and communication consultancies working to promote and support corporate citizenship in China. An example of this type of organization is the Chinese Committee for Corporate Citizenship and the China Business Council for Sustainable Development.

A private sector initiative he draws attention to is the Chinese Federation for Corporate Social Responsibility (CFCSR), which is interesting for its Western-Eastern mix of companies. It focuses on:

• best practices in CSR in China
• encouraging and promoting CSR
• supporting their members in their CSR and charity efforts.
• partnerships with Western companies operating in China, including IBM and CISCO

Pinney ends on a positive note, commenting on the energetic vibe you can pick up while traveling in China and musing at its economic wonders. He concludes, “Just as China launched its path to economic development in 1980, it is now determined to ensure that the benefits of economic development are shared by all Chinese, and is committed to making corporate citizenship a powerful tool for enlisting the support of the business sector.” China’s central government is taking its own steps, to its own beat. Regardless of what you think of their progress, private CSR initiatives are making improvements to lives and environments in China.

“China’s First SRI To Be Issued“
China CSR
March 24, 2008

Industrial Fund Management has been approved by the China Securities Regulatory Commission to begin the first socially responsible investment product in China.

It will be issued through eight Chinese banks and other securities companies on March 28. The most prominent feature of the SRI is that it will be mainly used for investing into socially responsible listed companies.

The company may face problems initially as it attempts to delve into the murky acocunting of some companies, even some of those that are listed. And because many Chinese companies’ definitions of corporate social responsibility place emphases on charitable giving rather than true environmental sustainability or labor rights, the fund may have some surprises in the future.

Some concerns about the prospect of socially responsible investing in China include the following:

• China’s poor human rights and environmental record
• Poor transparency and disclosure
• Stock market slump

Here’s an article from a couple of weeks ago that further explains the introduction of “SRI” into China:

“China plans 1st ’socially responsible’ mutual fund“
Environmental News Network
March 11, 2008

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China’s Industrial Fund Management Co Ltd is planning to launch a fund investing in shares of “socially responsible” Chinese listed firms, the first mutual fund product of its kind in the country, state media said on Tuesday. The company, which earlier this month received regulatory approval to launch the fund, has not published a prospectus. But analysts expect it to target companies engaged in environmentally friendly projects.

“What’s different is that the fund will concentrate its investment on listed firms with decent performance in terms of social responsibility,” the China Securities Journal said.

….

Some analysts said the new offering from Industrial Fund Management could be a hard sell in China, in part due to a stock market slump that has hit overall mutual fund sales.

“It remains unclear whether the fund would be successful in China because most domestic investors focus on returns but not social responsibility,” said Zhou Liang, head of China research for Lipper, a Reuters company, which tracks more than 95,000 funds worldwide.

For more information about socially responsible investing, please check out these Web sites:

• ASrIA - Association for Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Asia
• SRI Asia - Specialists in Socially Responsible Investing, Indexing and Research in Asia.
• Social Investment Forum - Trade association of the U.S. social investment industry and community. Related news, research, and user-friendly member directory.
• Open SRI - Web collaborative SRI rating platform
• Green Money Journal - Newsletter that provides resources and contacts for environmentally and socially responsible investing.
  

This post is part of an occasional series of interviews with those working on development and sustainability issues in China, particularly southwestern Sichuan province.

======

Contributing blogger Mark Hiew brings you an interview with Meg Young from Ecologia, an example of social entrepreneurship through rabbit farming in Sichuan. Here, Young explains some of her successes and development difficulties.

Rabbit breeders and interviewers. Photo credit: Meg Young

Young got her start in microfinance during college, while on a five-month long research program in Senegal, where she was introduced to a hunger project. She later connected with Ecologia, an NGO based in Vermont, during an international involvement conference.

Young came to Chengdu as a researcher in the summer of 2006 to conduct a feasibility study. Upon graduating from Middlebury College in Vermont, she returned to China through the Oxford World Leadership Corps in August 2007 on a 12-month program, which places people internationally within NGOs, following a similar pattern as the Peace Corps.

By 2006, Ecologia had been laying partnership roots in Dayi, a town 45 minutes outside of Chengdu, with a social entrepreneur named Ren Xuping. Known as the “Rabbit King,” Ren has been working with local farmers over the past 20 years, training them and providing rabbits as capital. He has affected an estimated 300,000 lives since he started his career in social entrepreneurship. Ren, like Young, was also interested in working with Ecologia when he found he was “hitting a wall” in terms of assisting beneficiaries.

A peasant from a poor family, Ren started raising rabbits at the age of 13. He later became a millionaire (in U.S. dollars) through a meat and fur factory entreprise. He was encouraged to extend his wealth to others by Deng Xiaoping, and then in 1984, through the American NGO Heifer International, he began providing direct lending of rabbits as capital. Heifer’s model of providing direct gifts of livestock for animal husbandry has been used successfully in many developing countries.

Ren Xuping helps farmers like this happy guy, who now takes his family on vacations to Shanghai, thanks to the money he earned through rabbit farming. Photo credit: Meg Young

Ren is building his own socially responsible supply chain through his philanthropy, since farmers can use rabbits locally or sell them back to him. He has great “guanxi,” or social relationships, that lie at the heart of what makes his efforts so successful.

Ren’s work in rabbit farming seemed like a natural place for microfinance. Many rural micro-entrepreneurs often still lack the start-up capital to run business. But Ren had instituted a gift model, wherein beneficiaries receive a 20 rabbit loan, then, after one year, they are then encouraged to pass on 20 rabbits to another beneficiary.

Ren’s NGO, the Rabbit King Poverty Alleviation Research Center (RKPARC), has three main pillars: working with female entrepreneurs, providing girls with education scholarships, and microfinance.

ResponsibleChina: What are some of the major challenges you face in working with your beneficiaries that may be different from those that other microfinance organizations face?

Cultural communication and language is the major difficulty Young cited for Ecologia. Ren said a cultural gap between American and Chinese staff made conversations lengthy and difficult. There are also differences in the way Ren’s RKPARC and Young’s Ecologia work together. Whereas both parties have a lot of clout, from Young’s perspective, Ecologia was looking to add “two grains of salt” to their ideas and procedures, whereas from the Chinese side they felt like “ball was in [Ecologia’s] court,” in terms of procedure and protocol.

Also, Heifer had given RKPARC firm deadlines and benchmarks that they had to follow; however, Ecologia follows a less task-oriented approach, more akin to a consulting partnership. This difference in expectations caused some difficulties.

Young says getting face time with beneficiaries is another difficult aspect of the project. Face time “ebbs and flows,” and it can be “intimidating” to beneficiaries, in that they are revealing sensitive information, which is then made more unusual by the presence of foreigners.

RC: What is the current state of organization of microfinance within the communities you work with in Southwestern China? Are they already on a quite large scale, or are they just starting off?

Microfinance is becoming more advanced and is currently scattered throughout the country. Wokai.org, a Beijing-based Web site, has plans to create a network of microfinance institutions across the country.

According to Young, many NGOs that have tried to cut and paste the “Grameen” microcredit model are struggling in their fledgling stages. They fail in China because of an underestimation of a couple of key points: 1) the important role that social relationships play in conducting business in China, and 2) the often extensive involvement of the government. For example, it’s still illegal to help people keep savings if you are not an officially registered bank. But Young also mentions that microfinance has gotten relatively easier to accomplish in China, as some regulations have already been lifted.

RC: The integral role of women in many microfinance contexts is well known. Are there any particular gender dimensions to your work that have become apparent?

Women’s role in Senegal is more focal, Young says. She quotes a development worker there as saying, “give the money to the woman, or it won’t feed anybody.” Gender relations in China are more balanced, Young believes, but there is still an expanding degree of impact when funds are given to women. Doing so changes some societal roles, and a greater percentage goes into education and long-term benefits.

Ren’s wife Zheng Shuping, the “Rabbit Queen,” has been focusing on female entrepreneurs and girls’ education.

RC: Do you see much room for innovation and creative development models—along the lines of Ashoka and the broader social entrepreneurship movement—within China, particularly at the grassroots level?

Backed by the Rockefeller Fund to expand corporate social responsibility (CSR) through social entrepreneurship, Ecologia has been creating CSR profiles of socially responsible entrepreneurs within the Chengdu region. It considers why people are making the decisions they’re making as far as social sustainability, with an eye towards internal networking within Chinese communities. The goal is to create a mentoring program between beneficiaries and those who’ve already succeeded.

RC: What are some major current issues that rural Sichuanese are facing, and what are some of the solutions that have worked?

Young says environmental policy changes have created major economic hardships for rural communities in Sichuan. A lot of farmland is being returned to forests, stripping farmers of their source of income. In many areas, coal mines are the major source of income, and while many are being shut down for environmental reasons, it leaves a great number of newly unemployed with no alternative source of income. Young also mentions the incredible rural-urban migration movement that separates many rural families. She often sees women beneficiaries who care for their in-laws and parents, as well as their own children.

“A lot of environmental solutions are Band-Aids for the scratch, when people need to be asking why are these things happening in the first place,” she says.

RC: Have you felt restricted or stymied working for an NGO in China, given civil society’s closer relationship to the government than might be the case in other countries?

Young explains that the government has been deeply involved and “very helpful.” At the moment, however, village elections are currently happening and so Ecologia has had to pause the project because it requires the full cooperation of village leaders. The microfinance lending cycle is six months to one year, which can be tenuous depending on the personal sentiments of the village leader.

As for major sources of inspiration, Young cites the “dedication and heart” of the Rabbit King and Queen. “That [two people] who have been working in philanthropy and development for over 20 years can continue to work at [such a pace] astounds me.”

She sees the project as a big victory as an example of successful multilateral cooperation—a small, Vermont-based NGO working with local Chinese social leaders using U.S. funding.

When asked for advice for young Westerners interested in coming to China to work in development, Meg offers some tempering words of wisdom:

“Know that even if you come over with a ‘can-do, idealist’ mentality, in the mean time, you’re gonna get your butt kicked and its not going to be easy. You will not learn Chinese in a day. You will learn to [take pride in] small accomplishments.”

(Photo via Salt Lake Tribune)

Veteran reporter Loretta Tofani’s most recent investigative project took her to China, where over a 12-month period she visited more than 25 factories and observed first-hand how Chinese workers routinely risk their health and sometimes their lives making products for export to the United States and other countries.

Tofani, who from 1992 to 1996 was The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Asia correspondent based in Beijing, examined thousands of U.S. import documents for this story. With a travel grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in Washington, D.C., she interviewed Chinese workers in hospitals, homes and outside their factories as well as dozens of attorneys, business leaders, government officials and labor activists. She also reviewed medical and legal records, medical journal articles, government reports and other documents.

The Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, Calif., also helped fund travel for the project with a grant from the Dick Goldensohn Fund for International Reporting.

Tofani won a Pulitzer Prize in 1983 at The Washington Post for a series documenting gang rape in a Maryland jail. She lives in Ogden.

I would especially like to point out the section of the series, “Who Is Responsible?”

So who is responsible?

Is it Chinese businesses or the nation’s central or local governments? International trade and labor organizations? Consumers themselves who buy — and demand — cheap Chinese-made goods?

Read Tofani’s full report to find answers.

[tags]China, factory conditions, worker safety, labor[/tags]