Over the last few days, thirteen multinational companies (“MNCs) have, with regard to the issuing of information about pollutant emissions, been suspected of using double standards and casting wide aspersions.

 

With regard to MNCs, their increasing frequency of their finger pointing in China is making each one of their accusations a little harder to understand.

 

The organization Greenpeace is currently in Beijing publicizing a report on a survey that it conducted, talking about its seven month survey of 28 famous global enterprises publications of information about their pollutant emissions, not only as people thought but amongst these 13 enterprises, not including any from China (only omitting China), they had double standards. These 13 enterprises are Exxon Mobil, General Motors, Royal Dutch Shell, Toyota Motors, Total, General Electric, Ford Cars, Nissan Motors, Hitachi, Nestle, BASF, BMW and Toshiba.

 

The author of the report wrote that right up until he sent his report he was in touch with all 13 companies, and that 10 of them - all apart from Total, Nissan and BMW – all replied promptly to the questions.

 

Multinational Companies Hit by “Environment Scandal”.

 

The results of Greenpeace’s survey  of external publications indicates that as for companies’ official websites, all 28 apart from Boeing publicly pronounced their global or regional pollutant emission information. However, only six published information for China. For the other 22 companies, which did not release information on pollutant emissions in China, there were 13 companies that perceivably are behaving with double standards when it comes to China: they published specific regional pollutant emissions information, but did not release information for these in China.

 

The person from the organization responsible for the project, Liu Lican, when accepting to be interviewed by our reporter said that the 28 companied selected for this survey none have functioning production sites in operation in China. The report found that although some companies such as Panasonic have information covering China, this information is excessively hard to interpret and navigate. Sony’s information on pollutant emissions for China, published somewhere on its English language website, even only for China does not have clear statements, and merely in the final notes reveals that “information for East Asia relates to China”.

 

The reporter also noticed that in the report, taking Toyota for example, some environmental information for China was left blank, and that information in their reports for Europe included information relating to five factories’ degrees and total amount of volatile organic compound emissions, energy and water consumption and total amount of emissions of other waste.

 

According to its introductions, the methods employed by Greenpeace’s survey were to browse the companies’ websites, check and analyze related information. In order to avoid any omission of information, the organization sent questionnaires to the 28 companies being submitted to the survey, giving a month for them to reply. Liu Lishan said, they only got 6 questionnaires back, and some, including GE’s internal departments, just sent back related company reports, not answering the questionnaire’s questions.

 

Liu Lishan at the same time also admitted that related to these 13 companies, the situation is perhaps even more serious for another 9 companies such as Panasonic and Samsung, which didn’t release information on their pollutant emissions for any single region. Also reflecting on reasons for the double standards, Liu Lishan just remarked that these companies not releasing pollutant emissions information for China, that this is stemming from a decision made after considering the right of the public to know such information.

 

The report shows that these companied have the ability to report their global and regional pollutant emissions and have intentionally reported them to the public, including those on certain emissions polluting domestic environments, but have chosen not to do so in China. Liu Lishan said: “We are calling on all companies, especially MNCs, to as soon as possible actively release full information relating to the environment in China, increase transparency, take positive steps to uphold the Chinese public’s right to be informed about their environment. Greenpeace is also taking steps to keep focusing on companies’ releasing to the public of environmental information and, what is more, hopes that the public and them can together supervise the companies’ positions regarding pollution.

 

The MNCs respond to the accusations of “double standards”

 

Up to the publishing of the report, 10 companies - Exxon Mobil, General Motors, Royal Dutch Shell, Toyota, Ford, General Electric, Hitachi, Nestle, BASF and Toshiba – replied to the reporters’ questions. Hitachi claim that they didn’t receive the envelope for the Greenpeace survey, also completely unaware of Greenpeace’s report, so were without any way to respond to the reporters’ questions. All the companies responding to the reporters’ questions all denied that they were employing any double standards when it came to the release of information on pollutant emissions. They also indicated that all of their pollutant emissions levels conformed to national standards and that they were keenly promoting green business. They pronounced that they respected the Chinese public’s right to be informed about their environment and that they would, according to the requirements of China’s laws and regulations, uphold and take responsibility for this obligatory duty.

 

Toyota’s Niu Yu, told the reporter that now Toyota’s three main business activities in China are hybrid power cars, environmental factories and public benefit environmental activities. He also said that Toyota has all along paid great attention to environmental protection. From last year, Toyota has started to, together with other JV factories in China, produce accounting that includes pollutant emissions, predicting that before long they will be able to start publicly announcing such information.

 

Shell’s China group head of public affairs, Liu Xiaowei told the reporter that Shell has all along placed environmental protection amongst the company’s guiding principles, and that many of Shell China’s JVs and wholly owned entities published pollutant emissions information on their websites, for example Zhonghai Shell Chemical Processing Ltd.

 

But Liu Xiaowei at the same time admitted, to think that Shell could make every business release information on their pollutant emissions isn’t very realistic. Shell presently has a presence in 140 country’s businesses, and the number of businesses that it has established in China is also quite considerable, in some businesses it doesn’t have a controlling influence, is powerless to decide whether or nor pollutant emissions should be announced; some subsidiaries have only several tens of staff, putting pollutant controls into their accounting process might not be very realistic. What’s more, pollutant emission information involves a corporation’s commercial secrets, so if they publicly announce them then it may harm their commercial interests. 

 

Liu Xiaowei indicated, at present, on April 1^st, 2008, the implementation of the “(Provisional) Methods for Publication of Environmental Information” really didn’t place any mandatory requirements on companies to publicly announce information on their pollutant emissions, and was merely offering only encouragement to companies to do so, only placing requirements to publicly announce on those companies exceeding national or regional standards, or serious polluters whose totals surpassed regional people’s government verified target limits on total volume.

 

At the same time, Shell China is not a company listed on the Chinese market, at a company level is not at all subject to such mandatory requirements to publicly announce pollutant emissions. Liu Xiaowei indicated that if the Chinese government policies were to require it to publish information on pollutant emissions then it surely would act according to the laws.

 

Knocking off the halos worn by MNCs.

 

As for why recently ever more MNCs have been castigated by the media, the reporter, in his interviews, encountered an industry expert who imparted his closely-kept insights. He told the reporter that, as China’s economy has developed, more and more domestic businesses have been able to match MNCs for strength. MNC’s are gradually having their dazzling halos taken away and this is the basic situation for these companies, that if these type of problems are brought to light then it is easy for them to get spread around with abandon these days, picked up by waves of public opinion. So MNCs can easily become the objects of slanderous accusations.

 

This industry insider believes that at present when looking at how Chinese companies shape up to MNCs it is possible to see that in many areas they are still not very mature and that the Chinese government should commit to drawing up some good “rules for the game”, or regulations on competition, to give MNCs and local companies competing on the same performance platforms more equitable shares of the program.

 

And, simply when looking at the present situation, we can still see that the “(Provisional) Methods for Publication of Environmental Information” implemented on May 1^st, 2008 still has still a few unsatisfactory sections. Two of the Methods might make people raise their eyebrows: The Ministry of Environmental Protection will every year before March 31^st publish its annual report on its work on opening up government environmental information to the public; citizens, legal professionals and other organizations believe that the Ministry of the Environment, in its work on opening up government environmental information to the public will specifically administer issues relating to violations of legal rights and interests, and in such a way can apply for administrative reconsideration or bring a case before a court in line with relevant laws.

 

The vice-head of environmental planning at the Ministry of Environmental Protection Wang Jinnan said in a disgruntled way, “These methods are too cumbersome, many provisions still don’t possess potential for operation, are still too fuzzy, many are just in the form of principles”. The Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs’ director Ma Jun also indicated that “Many of this country’s environmental legal regulations perform practically no function. These new “methods” might also be consigned to the same fate.”

 

How to make businesses release more accurate and effective environmental information and data to the public, so as to uphold the public’s right to be informed, right to participation, is a difficulty faced by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and many NGOs.

 

An expert economist from the World Bank, Dr. Wang Hua, said “We are promoting independent third-party environmental monitoring bodies, their operation being completely market based, and if the data that they release has discrepancies from those of government or businesses then public opinion might exert pressure on those governments and businesses.”

 

Ma Jun says that the cost of encouraging good enterprise through active public release is exorbitant, “but regional governments must realize, China cannot forever be MNCs’ investment paradise, and that in order to be the industrial park of the world it must develop clean production zones”.