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China has the highest level of sourcing activity for BSCI’s over 1,200 participants. BSCI therefore closely monitors developments and activities in this country to ensure the highest labour conditions and increasing social compliance of producers for its participants, including brand companies, retailers and importers. In this article, we provide an update of BSCI’s priorities and key activities that are planned for 2014. The results of BSCI’s social compliance monitoring process in China clearly illustrate the most pressing labour issues (with either ‘non-compliant’ or ‘improvement needed’) to address. As shown in the graph below, for example, the most significant and frequently occuring non-compliances revealed by audits included Occupational Health & Safety, Compensation and Working Time. Accordingly, BSCI has based its capacity building activities around these key local labour issues to support its participants and strengthen labour practices.

BSCI Steps Up its Stretegic Alliance with China
A key priority for BSCI in China during 2014 is to step up its strategic alliance for China with five leading organisations, through the Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Committee (MAC). The MAC focuses on jointly developing solutions to address cross-cutting labour issues in China including driving collaboration of standards and code systems, developing dialogue among global and local stakeholders, and sharing consensus-based strategies for improving industrial relations, labour conditions and business competitiveness. MAC founding partners are BSCI, China National Textile and Apparel Council, Social Accountability International, Solidaridad, Sedex and WRAP. This builds on BSCI’s efforts to increase cooperation with other organisations in risk countries. For example, the Foreign Trade Association (FTA) /BSCI visited China (9 December 2013) to mark the conclusion of BSCI's celebration of 10 years of improvement in building a socially responsible global supply chain. There, FTA Director General Jan Eggert met with a number of major media actors in Shanghai. Mr. Eggert also co-hosted the 9th Sino-European CSR European Round Table Forum, a professional and practical communication platform for China and Europe on CSR, alongside representatives from the Chinese Ministry of Trade, China WTO Tribune, the German Technical Cooperation (GIZ) and the China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTAC). This enabled FTA/BSCI to deepen multi-stakeholder alliances and emphasise its commitment to offering training resources through its capacity building framework.