Dr. Liang Xiaohui: New progress and issues in the fields of industry, commerce and human rights

On the morning of March 11, 2021, Dr. Liang Xiaohui, deputy chief economist of China National Textile Information Center, chief researcher of Social Responsibility Office of China National Textile Industry Council, held a seminar on the new progress and new problems in the field of industry, commerce and human rights for the teachers and students of Human Rights Research Institute. At the beginning of the lecture, Professor Liang pointed out that this topic is closely related to various issues and trends in China and the world today, such as population aging, COVID-19 and artificial intelligence, and that the universal connection between business and human rights is based on the popularization of human rights awareness and the development of the market economy. Professor Liang then pointed out that since the early 1990s, the impact of the international BHR agenda on China has experienced three waves, which is autonomy, legalization and politicization.

Professor Liang pointed out that the autonomy of BHR was realized by the self-drive of the industrial and commercial industry and the "autonomy" of business models like the international supply chain. In this process, rules and initiatives such as contract, treaty, convention and self-contract were generated. The implementation method of human rights responsibility autonomy by contract is mainly factory inspection, which is mainly about the protection of labor rights. However, there are some problems such as low transparency and credibility, and low implementation efficiency caused by repeated operation. The self-governance of human rights responsibility in the form of treaty is dominated by industrial organizations. Such a path has economies of scale in a certain industry or region, but still fails to ensure fairness and effectiveness. The convention style human rights responsibility autonomy also includes the third party other than the two parties in the business relationship, which can better accommodate and coordinate the commercial interests and the overall interests of the society, and also has a high fairness and transparency. However, all these BHR autonomous mechanisms have the fundamental problem that they cannot penetrate the whole supply chain, which causes the downstream enterprises in the supply chain to constantly transfer business risks and human rights risks to the upstream enterprises, which is an important reason for the frequent occurrence of human rights problems in the production of raw materials in recent years. In addition, the autonomy of BHR also has a hypocritical aspect. For example, the outbreak of COVID-19 made some buyers and brand companies ignore the basic rule of law, not to mention the human rights challenges and responsibilities in the supply chain.

Then, Professor pointed out that it was the defects of BHR autonomy that led to the rise of BHR rule of law since the beginning of this century. This is mainly manifested in four aspects. First, political consensus on the responsible governance of supply chain and the rule of law began to form. For example, no matter in the declaration of G7 Summit, G20 Summit or One Belt And One Road Summit, it was explicitly mentioned to strengthen the responsible governance of global supply chain. Second, the international law on human rights responsibility of supply chain is flourishing. The United Nations, OECD and the European Union all begin to discuss and formulate international rules concerning human rights responsibility of supply chain. Third, domestic legislation on human rights responsibility in the supply chain begins to rise. For example, at present, a large number of European and American countries successively introduce mandatory laws on human rights responsibility, which may be applicable to the whole supply chain of enterprises. Fourth, the integration of human rights responsibilities with international trade and investment regimes has accelerated, with a large number of free trade and investment agreements incorporating human rights elements.

Later, Professor Liang pointed out that the current BHR faced the formidable problem is the spread of the politicization of corporate human rights responsibilities. This is mainly due to China's "frozen" of the enterprise development in China, with the aid of industrial and commercial contact pressure, stimulate the political agenda definition of "clean" supply chain and build a "value alliance of supply chain and promote autonomy system of improvement and the need of improvement, but corporate responsibility on human rights issues politicized leads to the " halo effect " of business decisions, "neighborhood effect" avoidance of upstream and downstream cooperation, the "broken window" of improvement and development ,"chilling effect" of initiatives and standards , which is and will continue to cause great damage to both business and human rights.

Finally, Professor Liang pointed out that the way forward for BHR should be to "seize the tide of rules" and "enhance the moral system", that is, to rebuild and strengthen the mechanism of autonomy with the values and principles of human rights, and to promote the legalization of the international BHR agenda that is compatible with the development of industry and commerce and the realization of human rights, so as to counter the reverse current of the politicization of the BHR field.

The lecture came to a successful end in the warm applause of the students.

Written by SUN Yimei