The CNTAC launched the China Social Compliance 9000 for Textile & Apparel Industry (CSC9000T) in 2005, which is a social responsibility management system based on China's laws and regulations. The CSC9000T won support from domestic and overseas textile manufacturers and was recognized by the World Bank as an example of a national specific set of standards. More than 940 Chinese textile manufacturers and approximately 3,600 managers and employees have received training on the standard. More than 92 enterprises have passed through the appraisal and evaluation process and 75 are either building up the system or under the trial of the system.

How should China's textile and apparel enterprises handle trade conflicts and strengthen international cooperation?

The CNTAC functions as a bridge for Chinese textile manufacturers to look for overseas partners. We have carried out cooperation with the International Labor Organization and gained positive feedback. Until now, we have offered training on international cooperation to more than 180 managers from 25 enterprises.

We signed a cooperation agreement with the Foreign Trade Association (FTA) to jointly build a responsible international supply chain last year. Besides this, we have already opened dialogue with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S.-based Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production (WRAP) and the Walt Disney Co. on strategic cooperation.

We also started cooperating with the European Commission and many retailers and have reached consensus with them on the next-stage cooperation.

We are facing numerous problems in building a responsible international supply chain. International purchasers of Chinese products usually verify the competence and quality of Chinese enterprises through in-factory inspections and evaluation. As the standards of different importers vary, Chinese enterprises always face repeated in-factory inspections. It's an important issue for China's textile and apparel enterprises to establish credit and perform their social responsibilities initiatively to save the legwork in the long run.

What roles will the council play in helping Chinese textile and apparel enterprises perform better?

We will focus on several aspects this year. Firstly, it's one important goal that we help 200 enterprises to either implement the CSC9000T standards, or establish an elementary system, or complete the establishment of the CSC9000T system.

It's also our goal to continue to improve the CSC9000T system, because the current system puts stress upon the employment behavior and management system. We will expand the standards to consider factors such as environmental effects, fair trade and management of the supply chain.

The third one is that we will work on providing value-added services to enterprises that have performed their social responsibilities, like recommendations to make them more recognizable on the international supply chain.

We will also invite some international corporate social responsibility (CSR) organizations, such as FTA and WRAP, to jointly offer training to Chinese enterprises and carry out appraisal and evaluation of them. We hope that these activities will make mutual recognition of the CSR standards of both sides much easier in the near future. The European CSR platform, like the Business Social Compliance Initiative of European retail companies, verifies an enterprise's CSR credit through purchasing. We should first offer joint training to enhance China's textile and apparel manufacturers' performance of their social responsibilities and, in the long run, attain the goal of mutual recognition of both sides' CSR standards. This will reduce the frequency of in-factory inspections and entirely abolish the practice some day.

We are planning to carry out more exchanges with related NGOs, industrial organizations, retailers and brand businesses, and at the same time to set up a platform for sharing with them the achievements Chinese textile manufacturers have attained. We hope these efforts will help high-performing Chinese enterprises to be automatically recognized by the CSR systems of our trade partners.

We will also finish compiling guidance documents on standards for different sub-industries, such as apparel and household textile industries, because each sub-industry has its own characteristics and special requirements in employment behavior and occupational health and safety. Accordingly, we will work out related guidance for different sub-industries on how to implement these standards.