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had initially concluded that not much has been done by the companies to take sufficient action for the compliance with the global standards (Karlsson, 2019).
Antithetical to this, there are several indications that China made progress in accountable sourcing and production beyond some areas. The China Chamber of Commerce of Metals Minerals and Chemicals Importers and Exporters (CCCMC) instituted the Chinese Due Diligence Guidelines for accountable supply chains of minerals in the year 2015 and it was also influential in initiating the 2016 Responsible Cobalt Initiative (RCI). In line with RCS Global, there are an escalating number of Chinese processors and producers who strive to bring company enactments in line with the global standards (Karlsson, 2019).
7.7. Overall analysis of the low Chinese CSR environmental and social
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such as: China Lets Child Workers Die Digging in Congo Mines for Copper19 alleged one headline.
This is to communicate the message of Chinese smelters with operations in the DRC’s Katanga province who purchase copper ore from the Middlemen who alternatively collect it from children (responsible for digging in extensively precarious circumstances). Neither the middlemen nor the Chinese smelters feel morally accountable to ensure that their copper and/or cobalt is produced under bearable conditions. This shows that the realities of poverty within the Katanga Province will need the resolution of the dilemmas that are much more impenetrable than to easily enforce labour laws. With that said, one of the most long-lasting critiques of the Beijing government engagement in Africa relates to the underhanded labour practices.
Chinese construction companies in Africa have continued to contravene the local minimum wage laws including the affirmative action training preconditions. They have also dismally failed to recompensate the social security and allowances resulting in complaints by the African workers in most of the Chinese factories, shops, and construction sites. This is not only about African workers with such concerns because part of the issue lies in the ignorance of the Chinese MNCs of the local labour regulations. Basically, most of the Chinese MNCs in Africa have a history of applying low standards in the ‘town and village enterprises.’
Some of the Chinese MNCs have also gotten around their worker obligations by shifting contracts to local companies that can provide temporary labour services, moving the accountability to the broker to recompensate the benefits needed under the local law. In this instance, not only the Chinese are involved. This problem is called sub-contracting and is a common practice in alternative non-Chinese companies including the mining areas of Zambia, Angola and DRC (Rapanyane, 2020a).
Observably, the non-Chinese MNCs and SOEs such as Mopani Copper mines have frankly subcontracted far more Zambian local workers under “unacceptably poor conditions” than did the company of China at the Chambishi mine.
19 One-line access to this website and/or headline has been denied.
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Subsequently, one can argue that the tolerance of Chinese officials of most of these practices is a reflection of the stark difference in the evolution models- what scholars would understand as the “Beijing Consensus” and the “Trade Union consensus”. One of the motivating factors of the continuation of this injustice is the fact that China’s economic development success started with comparably low wages that allowed most of the Chinese people to find jobs. This is based on the advice of Liu Kungyuan (China’s Economic and Commercial Counselor) who advised the African nation-states to “sacrifice on labour costs now for future generations” arguing also that “Let people be paid lower wages now and attract more FDI and set up manufacturing so that the future generation will reap the benefits of the sacrifices” (Brautigam, 2009: 301). With the environmental sphere, most of the Chinese companies have been accused and implicated in unauthorised harvesting of ‘old-growth timber and illegal fishing’ and in attaining concessions without respect for the rights of the local host communities.
Some guidelines are expected to be used by the Chinese logging companies abroad as communicated by China’s State Forestry Administration and the Ministry of Commerce which include greater emphasis on consultations and compensation of local host communities. Just as there are no penalties for not adhering to these guidelines; also, without much of the civil society protests against holding the Chinese MNCs and SOEs responsible; progress will forever be slow. Additionally, most of the ethnic Chinese companies who stem from Taiwan, Malaysia and Hong Kong have also been very much active in these unwanted scenarios and often created additional complications for any effort from Beijing to monitor the Chinese firms (Johnson, 2016).
Since all of these companies explicitly ship their timber, cobalt and copper straight to China, the environmental responsibility buck stops ultimately there. Amongst the centre of the critique is the hydropower dams’ construction on China’s social and environmental role within the African continent. These include the Adjarala Dam between the border of Togo and Benin, Imboulou in DRC, Tekeze in Ethiopia, Bui in Ghana and Merowe in Sudan which have been financed by China’s Exim Bank (Johnson, 2016; Brautigam, Hwang, & Wang 2015; Brautigam, 2009). As many more others are only beginning to find scholarly expression, this study was able to discover that the Merowe Dam in Sudan across the Nile is a bitter, far extreme example of the project that is problematic. Several farmers have been protesting against the
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compelled resettlement in the arid conditions far away from the lush banks of the Nile due to this project and on some occasions, the police had to shoot to kill some of the protestors (Zeitoun, 2019).
The financing of big hydropower dams in poor nation-states often has both the environmental and social costs that planners including China Exim Bank, the IMF and World Bank often fail to incorporate. It is important to take note that up to 70% of the hydropower potential in the Global North countries and/or wealthy countries were done during the era when a dam was interpreted as an indication of progress; not a breastpin of environmental and social devastation (Brautigam, 2011). The African continent is admittedly late to the hydropower development, running headlong into the growing complaints regarding the social and environmental impact. As a consequence of this, only 8% of the African continent’s hydropower energy potential was ever developed leaving many Africans to also heavily rely on kerosene and firewood for light, heating and cooking (Brautigam, 2011). This includes those who are privileged with connection to the grid as they continue to suffer duplicated power outages. In the DRC for example, they can contemplate up to 170 days with power outages yearly;
and 120 days in Tanzania.
There are considerable big rivers in central Africa that can undoubtedly be blossomed to provide enormous energy security to various African nation-states. Such big rivers have now become targets for big Chinese SOEs and MNCs like Sinohydro for maintenance. It is without a doubt that through the BRI, the promotion of the dams in the whole world is based on an analysis that does not recognise the true cost. It is also pleasing that following the establishment of the Guide opinion, China’s Exim Bank in July 2008 also published their guidelines for environmental and social assessments that align to the approach of the policy bank with the Beijing government’s “Green Credit” policy based on the Guide opinion that includes resettlement and land rights as important brand-new concerns (Yao, Pan, Sensoy, Uddin, & Cheng, 2021). It is without a doubt that even if such initiatives have been developed, the concept of CSR is still very new in China itself, including amongst the Chinese MNCs and SOEs with aspirations to operate abroad.
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In the previous two decades (2000-2020), China has been battling with the human rights core of the CSR issues whilst focusing on building clinics and schools. Chinese MNCs and SOEs equally are taking time to understand the need to engage with their host communities abroad for permission matters. As they are struggling with this; their attitude has been that they will bring jobs, build schools and clinics. This is a desperate attempt at wanting to always do the right thing. CSR can come in handy to them in avoiding exorbitant reputational risks. Rio Tinto and Anglo American with satisfying environmental, social and governance standards as partners of some of the Chinese multinational mining companies have repeatedly offered to assist Chinese MNCs and SOEs to maintain similarly high standards and assist them in various ways to maintain all CSR requirements. The interest of China in collaborating with these companies that are more experienced, better technologically equipped with more assets makes these areas of collaboration promising, as long as the international expectations for better environmental and social performance remains strong through these complicated social and environmental challenges.