Liang Xiaohui: CSR Practice of the Textile and Apparel Industry in China

Mr. Liang Xiaohui, research fellow of the Office for Social Responsibility, China National Textile and Apparel Council, gave the speech “CSR Practice of the Textile and Apparel Industry in China”. Based on the status quo of China’s textile and apparel industry, Mr. Liang mainly introduced their research on social responsibility of China’s textile and apparel industry and their achievements.

Firstly, Mr. Liang talked about problems occurring in China’s textile and apparel industry: 1. The supply chain of enterprises, the relationship between suppliers and enterprises, and suppliers’ different standards of assessment; 2.several years before, the textile and apparel industry was export-oriented, but now this is not the case anymore; 3. As a labor-intensive industry, textile and apparel industry is in need of qualified labors.

Then, he talked about challenges faced by textile and apparel industry in environment protection. A huge amount of water is needed in dying - a key process in the industry in which the water is discharged and being seriously polluted. Water pollution can still be prevented through technical support, but the treatment equipmentis so expensive that itcannot be afforded by middle and small enterprises. Another problem occurs with international trade.

In the last part of the speech, Mr. Liang explained the status quo of textile and apparel industry and their social responsibility process through diagrams and sheets. Firstly, in the past two years, export volume of the industry plummets with continuous negative growth while domestic sales kept growing. Such a structural change raises people’s awareness of the social responsibility concerning domestically sold products: With the increase of production costs, can the quality of those products meet the safety requirements? Secondly, an efficient mechanism to realize people’s social responsibility is still lacking in Western China where the textile and apparel industry is developing. Thirdly, the shortage of labor is the key problem of the industry and enterprises must find out how to satisfy employees and make them more socially responsible. Fourthly, how can we treat the worn-out clothes and articles and solve the paradox between fashion and consumption. Fifthly, as one component of the society, corporations must motivate consumers to have correct consumption ideas and shoulder social responsibility.