Office for Social Responsibility of China National Textile and Apparel Council

On July 3, the symposium on ESG promotion of China's textile and clothing industry, jointly organized by the Office for Social Responsibility of CNTAC and Far East Credit Management Co., Ltd. was held in the China Textile Information Center. The Glorious Sun School of Business and Management of Donghua University participated in this meeting as a supporting unit.

The meeting was presided over by Dr. Liang Xiaohui, Principal investigator of the Office for Social Responsibility of CNTAC; Yan Yan, Director of the Office for Social Responsibility of CNTAC; Yang Qiuling, Chairman of Far East Credit Management Co., Ltd.; Shen Bin, Vice President of the Glorious Sun School of Business and Management of Donghua University; Li Yixuan, Secretary General of the Digital China Research Institute of the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Jing Shenquan, Vice President of the China Cotton Textile Association; Ji Jianbing, Vice President of China Nonwovens & Industrial Textiles Industry Association; Wang Jing, Researcher of the Office for Social Responsibility of CNTAC; Liu Xiangfeng, Founder of Quant Data; and Lu Ling, Assistant Editor in Chief of Caijing magazine, and other leaders and guests attended the meeting to jointly provide suggestions for better promoting ESG work in the textile and clothing industry and guiding enterprises to improve the quality and efficiency of information disclosure.

At the beginning of the meeting, Yan Yan, Director of the Office for Social Responsibility of CNTAC, introduced why we should insist on promoting ESG-related work in the textile and clothing industry. Since China's reform and opening up, China’s textile and clothing industry has developed rapidly and has grown into an industry with high international competitiveness advantages. Social and environmental risk prevention and sustainable development are particularly important based on the present and thinking about the future. Promoting green manufacturing and fulfilling social responsibilities have also become key to building a modern textile industry system.

At the same time, she pointed out that for a long time, China National Textile and Apparel Council has been leading the ESG information disclosure work of listed companies in the industry, continuously deepening the ESG responsible management of supply chain, and promoting the ESG capacity building of "going global" enterprises to a new level, cultivating a good soil for the ESG framework to take root in the industry.

Yang Qiuling, Chairman of Far East Credit Management Co., Ltd., further emphasized that ESG work has important practical significance for promoting green finance, compliance management, and sustainable development. Currently, ESG work generally faces two problems: firstly, the quality of underlying data acquisition could be better, and secondly, the breadth and depth of industry research need to be further improved. In view of this, it is even more important to attach importance to the cooperation of multiple stakeholders and improve the efficiency of ESG work through complementary advantages and resource sharing. He also stated that Far East Credit and China Textile Federation will continue to cooperate to explore the implementation mechanism of ESG work and look forward to sharing relevant experience with more industries.

Shen Bin, Vice President of the Glorious Sun School of Business and Management of Donghua University, also emphasized issues related to ESG data. He believes that ESG information disclosure focuses on how to collect, publish, and when to publish data. In addition, he encourages enterprises that need help understanding their own ESG performance level to participate in rating actively. This promotes high-quality development of enterprises, and helps them gain a proactive advantage in commercial competition.

Shen Bin, Vice Dean, Professor, and Doctoral Supervisor of of the Glorious Sun School of Business and Management of Donghua University

Li Yixuan, Secretary General of the Digital China Research Institute of the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, introduced the development trend of ESG standards after presenting the general ESG disclosure standard system at home and abroad, and proposed the construction concept of China's ESG standards. She believes that China's ESG standard construction can refer to the "1+N" strategy, where "1" refers to a set of standard systems as the lead, and "N" refers to the development of industry segmentation standards that are suitable for their attributes across multiple industries.

Ji Jianbing, Vice President of China Nonwovens & Industrial Textiles Industry Association, shared the challenges and efforts faced by his industry in ESG work. He stated that to better fulfill the industry's industrial development responsibility, supply chain responsibility, environmental responsibility, and human-centered responsibility, the Association has carried out a series of actions, such as establishing a green development innovation alliance for the nonwoven industry and collaborating with key industry enterprises to establish a standard system around the green supply chain of nonwoven fabrics and products.

At the meeting, Wang Jing, Researcher of the Office for Social Responsibility of CNTAC, also systematically introduced the idea of promoting ESG in China's textile and clothing industry, introduced the ESG performance optimization platform of China's textile and clothing industry from five aspects of data sharing, risk tips, training resources, member activities and hot news, and elaborated the ESG indicator system of China's textile and clothing industry, and announced the progress arrangements for the ESG performance evaluation work in the second half of 2023.

In the future, China's textile and clothing industry will continue to uphold the industry positioning of "innovation," "green," and "fashion" and continue to promote the joint exploration of social responsibility development paths in all aspects of the industrial chain, adhere to the sharing of sustainable development achievements throughout the entire industrial chain, and firmly strive for the beautiful vision of "the main driver of world textile technology, an important leader of global fashion, and a strong promoter of sustainable development."