ABSTRACT

This chapter describes how the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda playing out in China, how much impact is CSR having on the ground and the potential for systems of strengthened worker representation to offer more effective means of protecting working conditions in Chinese factories. The region in China most audited by CSR monitors is the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong Province. A quarter of a century ago the Pearl River Delta region was essentially agricultural. When China began its economic opening up in the early 1980s, it established its first export trade zone, the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, across from the Hong Kong border. The wages were at least ten times lower than those in Hong Kong. Foreign investors, who were mainly suppliers for transnational corporations (TNCs), quickly moved in, and the entire delta was transformed into the world's workshop in two decades.