September 2010: Follow-up CP campaigning plans in China
To follow up the progress on CP campaigning and business plans of CPSUs a first number of CPSUs - Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guangxi - were visited in the period from 12/08/2010 to 25/08/2010 by PM Gerhard Weihs (CAI) and project assistant and interpreter Wang Ying (CAI).
The development of such plans is on the agenda of the ASIA-INVEST project "Capacity Building and Establishment of Cleaner Production Service Units & Campaigns for the Industry in the Less Developed Regions of China" which is conducted in 11 Chinese provinces of the period 2008 to 2011.
The purpose of the visits to CPSUs (Cleaner Production Service Units), which have been established during the project, was to further support the activities in the Chinese provinces. After the summer-break and after having delivered their business plans to campaign CP in their provinces already in March 2010 it was to see how these plans are materialising with concrete actions meanwhile. It was of further interest, whether the experiences gained during the study tour to Europe have led to some modifications of the planning or to new ideas how to run a CP campaign. Besides this it was tried to get an impression to which extent the plans and the interim taken actions to put the plans into life are of relevance for the needs of the province, are effective to achieve the campaigns' results, are efficiently composed regarding management and CP teams, will likely have a significant impact on the final target group SMEs, and have a sustainable perspective to form a long-term business for the CPSUs.
Although the activities in the provinces are on schedule and all CPSUs are eager to try their best to achieve an outreach to enterprises in their provinces, some heavy problems exist, too. One of the biggest barriers to mainstream CP in China is the rather unique CP policy of the Chinese government. While CP usually is used by industry voluntarily to increase performance and profit of enterprises, China has issued already in 2003 a mandatory CP Audit policy. As a result only few companies undergo CP assessments as a command and controll exercise, the big mass of companies in China comes out empty-handed. Another problem is the frequently reported misuse of the system; many companies, which are designated to compulsory CP audits, are just seeking to get the CP certificates in the cheapest way. It looks very much that China is going to spoil the good idea of CP this way. The more it seems necessary that initiatives like this Asia-Invest project are taken to reach also volunteers to earn the benefits of CP in a serious way.