The main theme of the conference is labor and capital in the twenty-first century. When we look around the world today and the near future, the United States and China will still be the countries that command the greatest number of laborers and the largest quantity of capital in the twenty-first century. The United States is the most developed country in terms of financial capital, while China is the biggest developing country and has the richest human resources. The increasing investments and business transactions between the United States and China have influenced not only each other but also the whole world. The range of influence has already gone beyond the pure economic domain to reach issues in ideology, politics, and community that one can hardly avoid. The related discussions from the labor relations perspective are still growing and have received wide attention recently.

Presenters here are doing very concrete and succinct presentations on what MNCs will encounter when they invest their capital in China and how the United States MNCs could positively affect China's labor relations. In order to facilitate discussions later, I would like to provide some additional comments from the three actors of governments, MNCs, and labor unions.

To begin with, we have recognized that no country can disregard international opinions, act according to its will alone, and escape the wave of globalization. In other words, internal legislations and their implementation have the common foundation on the global level, in which modern enterprises may operate across boundaries. As we have seen today, many bilateral or multilateral mechanisms have existed and really have had impacts, even though this common foundation still needs to be strengthened.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a good example for making international labor standards and implementing supervisory machinery. Since 1919 the ILO has stipulated more than 180 conventions and 190 recommendations that have helped to establish a landmark for the labor relations on the international level and set minimum standards for operations upon working conditions and industrial relations.

As Professor Zeng, Dean of the School of Labor Relations and Human Resources at China Renmin University, illustrates in his paper clearly, working time arrangements in China have a very close relationship with international labour standards (ILS). In fact, his paper also indicates that the labor law and labor policy in China following Reform and Open-up Policy are catching up with ILS progressively. For instance, the 1994 labor law and 2001 trade union law have discarded class struggle ideology totally and marched toward juridification of labor relations under a market economy. According to Professor Bain's paper, the Chinese government still retains its guiding role in decision making on human resources strategy in MNCs. With regards to China's labor relations in the twenty-first century, we will see whether it will develop its own labor relations model that differs from the United States, the European Union, and Japan.

Next to the ILO, there are two cases that illustrate how the internal labor law and policy could be changed through multilateral economic cooperation. The first case is Korea. In late 1996 Korea became a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), under the condition that it would improve its labor laws to meet international standards. At the end of 2005 the OECD came to a conclusion with regard to Korea's industrial relations reform by telling the Korean government to report the final results on the reform of labor law and labor-management relations by the spring of 2007, when the legislation for the government's Roadmap for Industrial Relations Reform is expected to be in place.

The second example is Mexico. The North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) was signed on September 14, 1993, by the presidents of Mexico and the United States and the Prime Minister of Canada as the supplementary accord and the social dimension to the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The NAALC has made many decisions for individual cases from the three member states before. In 2005 the NAALC issued a statement concerning the introduction of reforms to the Federal Labor Code of Mexico (Abascal Project), which would seriously diminish current labor standards, including the right to associate, to organize, and to bargain collectively, in violation of the Mexican Constitution, ILO Conventions adopted by Mexico, and the NAALC.

These two cases may provide some inspirations in improving the social dimension to economic cooperation between the United States and China, even though the two cases may not be fully applicable to the situation.

As a matter of fact, the Sino-American governments have taken the initiative to begin cooperation on the social dimension. For example, a Sino-American mine safety cooperation agreement was concluded in June 2004. So far we have no more concrete information to see how it works.

Secondly, corporate responsibility will extend from shareholders to stakeholders socially along with the development of the knowledge economy. Supplier chain management of MNCs especially is the locus of corporate responsibility to its stakeholders. This is the pressure from the original country mentioned in Professor Bain's paper. When U.S. MNCs invest in China,

U.S. consumer unions, labor unions, or environmental unions ask MNCs toadopt supplier chain management actively. However, according to my interview with China's unionists, the establishment of a trade union in Wal-Mart China is not a priority of the National All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) of the host country. After all, working conditions in Wal-Mart China are much better than those of other local companies.

I think the supplier chain management is one of the ways to achieve corporate social responsibility by making sure that U.S. MNCs' utilization of China's human resources is appropriate and fair. The result is yet to be seen given the situation of no mutual understanding or dialogue between U.S. and China labor unions. As I know at the end of 2004 a U.S. labor union group was denied a visa to enter southern China to visit sweatshops there. This is a very special way to manifest corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the original country. We must bear in mind that it may have negative consequences if CSR bypasses the trade union to get the certification on labor relations.

First of all, CSR may take the place of a checks and balances mechanism.

U.S. MNCs may use autonomous CSR activities to substitute for Chinese gov-ernment and labor union regulations. By then labor rights protection can only appeal to employers' goodwill and charity, something in great uncertainty.

Secondly, nongovernmental organizations (NGO) or nonprofit organizations (NPO) may take the place of the labor union. U.S. MNCs may dialogue with the NGO/NPO only, which cannot function as trade unions to legitimately negotiate and push forward working conditions but could only act as rights advocates.

Thirdly, certification standards may limit the scope of labor standards.

U.S. MNCs may use CSR certification standards to limit or change laborstandards stipulated in China's Labor Law, Constitution Law, and ILO Conventions.

Forth, certification audit may take the place of labor inspection. In fact, an audit without labor unions will cover up unfair labor practices through workers' cooperation.

Fifth, it may not be the labor rights but commercial competition that is the real objective behind CSR activities. U.S. MNCs in China may use CSR to enhance their corporate image and to boost their market niche on consumption, purchasing, investment, loans, and the stock market like SRI. In a word, labor rights protection, probably being a reflection of business competition, is twisted as a means to serve business interests.

At the end of my comments, because I come from Taiwan, I would like to introduce Taiwan's situation. Taiwan has poured in a huge sum of investments in China until last year; this investment amounts to more than US $40 billion officially, nearly US $200 billion unofficially. The movement of Taiwan enterprises to China has serious impacts on workers' job security in Taiwan. Critics describes this as "money goes to Mainland, debt stays in Taiwan."

It is only NGOs that are allowed as an intermediary to communicate on issues concerning economic cooperation across the Taiwan Strait. The Taiwan government will in the near future adopt new regulations to limit investment in China. Any substantial exchange on labor issues will be a problem without any official communication channels.

In addition, China's local governments adopt the most deregulated policies to Taiwanese enterprises in China at the expense of workers' rights. As a result, Taiwanese employers are notorious in the public image. According to Professor Bain's framework, there are no pressures either from mainland China or from Taiwan. It seems to be not a good thing to both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Last year, the ILO sent to the United Nations the report "A Fair Globalization—Creating Opportunities for All," which encouraged multilevel as well as multilateral dialogues as the most important means to ensure social justice in the age of globalization. We look forward to the establishment of mechanisms of direct dialogues between both the United States and China, as well as across the Taiwan Strait.

Thank you very much for your attention.