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CIIE exhibitors assist China in poverty reduction Release date: 2021-03-02    Source:Multiple

Foreign businesses, especially exhibitors at the China International Import Expo (CIIE), have promoted and witnessed China's opening-up and its arduous fight against poverty over the past decades. They have fulfilled corporate social responsibilities and developed precise programs and measures to assist people from impoverished regions in the country.

French cosmetics giant L'Oreal Group, which was the first rotating Chairman of the 3rd CIIE Enterprise Alliance, has always attached great importance to the sustainable growth of charity programs.

In accordance with a strategically cooperative agreement reached with the China Women's Development Foundation (CWDF) in 2015, L'Oréal organized vocational education and training on hairdressing and beauty services for female dropout students, jobless women and females from poverty-stricken families over at least the next five years, until 2020. So far, a total of 28 such training centers have been set up in China and as many as 5,757 target women have benefited from the charity initiative.

CIIE exhibitors have closely followed the development of education for children from impoverished areas across China as well.

For instance, Hyundai Motor Group, South Korea's largest automaker, has attended the CIIE for three consecutive years and has built a partnership with the China Youth Development Foundation (CYDF) to implement a charity program titled "the House of Dreams" over the past decade.

A group of volunteer employees of the South Korean carmaker, vehicle owners, auto dealers and media workers, have rallied behind the charity initiative to support the education and growth of children from remote areas in China.

So far, over 70 elementary schools from 30 regions have benefited from the charity program. One of its recipients, a rural elementary school at Huchao Township of Bouyei and Miao Ethnic Groups in Southwest China's Guizhou province, has received giant donations of multimedia installations and artistic instruments.

According to the Blue Paper of 2020 Corporate Social Responsibility published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Hyundai Motor Group ranked top for five straight years in the Chinese auto industry and took second place for five consecutive years in a list of foreign enterprises recognized for their outstanding performances in the charity sector in China.

Unilever, a leading and fast-moving global consumer goods company, worked with the CYDF in a charity initiative to provide customized training to teachers from elementary and secondary schools in the counties of Meitan and Daozhen, Zunyi city, Guizhou province, from 2017 to 2019, aiming to further raise their professional skills. Moreover, the foreign firm financed the building of three kitchens and four libraries and the installation of two sets of equipment for physical exercises in Daozhen during the same period.

As of December 2019, Roche Pharma China had built cultural activity centers for children in 14 rural schools of Zhejiang, Shandong, Liaoning, Sichuan and Anhui provinces, which together have benefited over 4,000 students. It set up its first such cultural activity center in Nantang Primary School in Anhui in 2009.

With financial contributions from its employees, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, a leading global accounting firm, built four multimedia classrooms in Midu, a county in Southwest China's Yunnan province, and provided local teachers with relevant materials in 2019 in a move to narrow the digital gap between local students and their urban peers.

Cargill Inc, a Minnesota-based agricultural conglomerate, launched a nutritional supplement package initiative composed of eggs and milk for children from impoverished families in Gansu, Shanxi, Hubei and Sichuan provinces in 2015. So far, over 1,200 children have received the nutritional packages.

Furthermore, CIIE exhibitors from other countries have over recent years prioritized the development of agricultural sectors in their efforts to help people from poverty-hit regions in China increase their prosperity.

Early in 2007 French supermarket giant Carrefour started to visit impoverished areas in China and purchased agricultural products directly from local farmers in a drive to better assist the poverty-stricken population. The firm bought a number of fruits and vegetables such as pears, apples and eggplants, the value of which totaled over 70 million yuan, from Xinjiang, Sichuan, Yunnan, Anhui and Heilongjiang in 2020, laying a solid foundation for farmers to have a stable sales channel and rising incomes.

Meanwhile, Carrefour has built a partnership with nearly 6,000 farmers from Yunnan, Heilongjiang, Xinjiang and Anhui for sales of their agricultural products.

Since 2009, Emerson, a Missouri-based technology and engineering company, has partnered with the Chinese Red Cross Foundation, the CWDF and the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation in the organization of charity affairs that are mainly involved in education, health and humanitarian assistance and community building. By the end of 2020, the firm had invested over 7 million yuan to build 12 centralized water supply projects in remote areas of Yunnan and helped nearly 8,000 local people gain access to safe drinking water.

The proactive participation of foreign companies in China's poverty relief is a further testament to the firm commitment of the Chinese government to building a sound business environment for them and to lifting millions of China's people out of poverty.

Sources: Xinhua, ce.cn, chinanews.com, thepaper.cn, Shanghai Foreign Investment Association, southcn.com