SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: HELPING THE COMMUNITY THRIVE
Our businesses cover many countries and regions and we have received unfailing support and attention from the government and the public. Therefore, we recognise the importance of our social responsibility and are committed to giving back to promote the prosperity and progress of the local communities. We align our community investment approach with the national policies and support the prosperity and development of the community in various ways. In 2019, the total donations of CITIC and its subsidiaries were about RMB184.12 million.
Performance
Awards and Recognitions
- China CITIC Bank received the “Effectively Tackling Three Challenges” Award at the Top 100 Social Responsibility Commendation Conference organised by the China Banking Association – the only bank to receive this award. The Company also received the “30 years/30 people” Funder Award from the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation and “2019 China Excellent Case of Precision Poverty Alleviation” by the 21st Century Asian Finance Conference for the poverty alleviation project in Xiementong County, Tibet.
- CITIC Securities won the “Social Responsibility Golden Bull Award” by the China Securities Journal.
- CITIC Trust received the “Poverty Alleviation Model Award 2019” at the 9th China Charity Festival.
- CITIC Pacific has been rated as a “Caring Company” by the Hong Kong Council of Social Service for five consecutive years. The Company also received the “Public Welfare Excellence Award” by the Hong Kong Community Chest.
- CITIC Construction received the “Outstanding Overseas Sustainable Development Enterprise Award” at the China Corporate Social Responsibility Annual Conference.
- CITIC Telecom International received the “Social Capital Builder” Award from the Community Investment and Inclusion Fund (CIIF) of the Labour and Welfare Bureau.
- Dah Chong Hong received the “Merit Award” in the Volunteer Team Group and ““Corporate Citizenship Logo”” in the Enterprise Group from the “The 10th Hong Kong Outstanding Corporate Citizenship Awards” organised by the Hong Kong Productivity Council.
Helping to eliminate poverty
As a state-owned enterprise, we honour our responsibility to the society. To show our care and support to the community, we help the underprivileged and our community work to alleviate poverty achieved remarkable results. In 2019, we stepped up our efforts and launched 37 projects to help Shenzha County in Tibet, Yuanyang County and Pingbian County in Yunnan to alleviate poverty. We also took further steps help Qianjiang District of Chongqing to sustain the results of poverty alleviation achieved in previous years.
Poverty alleviation through education
The “CITIC Scholarships” provided RMB2 million to help underprivileged but outstanding students in Yuanyang and Pingbian Counties, motivating them to pursue a better future. The Scholarships also provided RMB5.09 million to Shaba Township Central School to build a new CITIC Science Building to solve the problem of insufficient rooms. In Yuanyang County, an investment of RMB4.6 million was made to help eight schools to improve the educational facilities, which benefited 5,873 students. CITIC Trust and Beijing Daisy Flower Public Welfare Foundation signed a tripartite agreement with the 14th Division Education Bureau of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. A donation of RMB1 million was made to 472 students from the underprivileged ethnic minority and their families to provide them with subsistence allowance.
Every quarter, CITIC Press sends books on economics and management to government officers in designated poverty- stricken counties to help them broaden their knowledge and improve their management capabilities. CITIC Press also donated two sets of e-book equipment and books to the Honghe State Library, helping to create a “CITIC reading space” for the people of Honghe Prefecture to read and learn better. CITIC Press also donated RMB 400,000 worth of books and shelves to ten primary schools in Yuanyang County to help students open their horizons and increase their knowledge through reading.
Poverty alleviation through industrial development
A donation of RMB23 million was made for the construction of the Poverty Alleviation Centre Project in Shenzha County. After its completion, it will provide a platform to demonstrate animal husbandry and ethnic handicraft products of 62 administrative villages in Shenzha County. At the same time, it provides an employment and entrepreneurship platform for 43 Shenzha university graduates.
We introduced Yiwen Group to Yuanyang and Pingbian Counties to help the underprivileged to develop an embroidery industry so that women engaging in embroidery industry can enjoy a stable income. In 2019, RMB1.95 million was invested to carry out embroidery training, family workshops and embroidery museum building projects in these two counties. Two sessions of embroidery industrialisation and intangible cultural heritage training courses were conducted with 282 people.
We helped Qianjiang District to introduce five high-quality enterprises. An example was the donation of a total RMB500 million for the first batch of 118,000 yew trees in the “10 million yew into Qianjiang” project in Jiangdong Gandong Botanical Garden. After the Xinyuan Cocoon Silk Group project in Haian City, Jiangsu Province is completed, it will create 5000 employment opportunities in five years.
Assisting the underprivileged through infrastructure and medical care
A donation of RMB5.99 million was made to Yuanyang County to help 618 underprivileged people in 92 villages to rebuild their dangerous houses. In Pingbian County, a RMB3 million donation was made to help underprivileged people in the Liumao Village, Mama Village and other places to relocate, which help to solve the problems of poor living environments and hidden safety hazards. Another project is in Shenzha County to use the RMB6.5 donation to help 500 farmers and herdsmen to repair or reconstruct their houses. A Shaba Mutual Aid Care Centre was built in Qianjiang District with a RMB870,000 donation. This not only supported the elderly people with special difficulties, but also explored a new model for supporting the elderly in rural areas. This project has been included in Qianjiang District as the core senior care demonstration project.
In Shenza County, more than RMB4 million has been invested to carry out supporting projects for Tibetan Hospital previously built. Each year, RMB100,000 is injected into the “Muliang Village Medical Assistance Fund” in Shaba Township, Qianjiang District. Over the past three years, nearly 110 people in Muliang Village have been given medical assistance of nearly RMB270,000, which effectively helped more than people 60 who became impoverished because of illness or from suffering poverty. CITIC Trust, CITIC Investment Holdings and CITIC Holdings donated a total of RMB490,000 to purchase medical equipment for the clinics in the poor villages in Yuanyang and Pingbian County to improve the medical conditions at the primitive clinics and facilitate the poor to see the doctors and treat the diseases.
Establishing economic circles in poor counties
We encouraged our employees to purchase agricultural products and byproducts in poor counties. Through organising caring activities, such as charity walk, we spent RMB7,907,700 on their products throughout the year. We also helped the three designated areas to open online stores on the CITIC Easy Home Appliances Platform and set up a poverty alleviation zone on the WeChat public account platform of the Duanhe Employees Home, CITIC Bank Mobile Banking. On this platform, RMB760,200 worth of agricultural products was sold.
CASE STUDIES
CITIC Trust: Exploring New Ways of Poverty Alleviation
Since the launch of poverty alleviation and public welfare projects in 2009, CITIC Trust has taken real actions to explore, innovate and discover the institutional advantages of trust companies and functional positioning in poverty alleviation. CITIC Trust have adopted both traditional and trust projects in poverty alleviation, and have created numerous projects, such as “dual trustees”, “investment + poverty alleviation”, and Chinese version of the development assistance framework. With “collection and sharing”, the special features of trust, the effectiveness of CITIC Trust’s projects has been greatly enhanced, which has brought multiplying effects to the charitable actions and social cohesion to society. Among the twelve poverty-relief public trust projects, six charitable trust funds were established by wealthy clients, the scale of trust funds has reached RMB537 million. According to data from the National Charity Information Public Platform, it accounts for more than a quarter of the charitable sector.
“CITIC Shanghai Charity Foundation - Love under the Blue Sky No. 2 Huifu Charitable Trust” was established in 2017 with RMB6 million in initial trust funds. It is the first “dual trustees” charitable trust in Shanghai. In 2018, CITIC Trust pioneered the “investment + poverty alleviation” model for this charitable trust where investors took part of their investment income for charity, which matched the funds directly with the targeted poverty alleviation projects. In 2019, CITIC Trust and Shenzhen Dalifu Charity Foundation jointly made the first DAF donation (Donor-advised fund) in China. By the end of 2019, CITIC Trust had launched poverty alleviation activities in 34 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across the country, and cooperated with several charity organisations, such as the Soong Ching Ling Foundation, Guanghua Science and Technology Foundation, China Disabled Persons Welfare Foundation and other 43 community charities. These projects together with five other environmental protection organisations projects benefited more than 80,000 people, proving that the trust platform model is very effective.
On 11 January 2019, CITIC Trust successfully held the “Responsibility of Wealth-2019 CITIC Trust Wealth Annual Meeting and CITIC Trust Poverty Alleviation Report issuing Ceremony” the first report of its kind. In the future, CITIC Trust will further demontrate the social responsibility of a state-owned enterprise to further explore and innovate. The Trust will also optimise the public welfare model for poverty alleviation under the trust system to establish a long- term mechanism for participating in public welfare this way. The trust wishes to build a broader platform and motivate more people to participate to fight against poverty and achieve a better life for everyone.
Giving back to society
We continued to support education, sports and public health activities by donating funds to help the disadvantaged and to strengthen community infrastructure construction. We use our industrial advantage to create public welfare activities with CITIC characteristics.
Summer Internship for Hong Kong University Students
As the base of student internships for university students in Hong Kong, CITIC has organised summer internships for Hong Kong university students for five consecutive years. In 2019, 40 students from universities such as the University of Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University were arranged to go on an eight- week internship programme at CITIC Bank, China Securities, CITIC Construction Investment Securities, CITIC Trust and other financial companies. During their internships, students watched the match of Beijing Sinobo Guoan Football Team, which further strengthened the communication between young people in the Mainland and Hong Kong. Young people from Mainland were warmly welcomed by Hong Kong students. The programme was well received by the students and recognized by the general public.
Serving Hong Kong and Macau community
The CITIC Pacific Volunteer Team participated in the food redistribution programme, a regular volunteer activity organised by YMCA Hong Kong. Volunteers regularly visit Cheung Sha Wan to collect vegetables and bread and donate them to the elderly or underprivileged families in the district. The Company also organised the “Elderly Household Cleaning and Caring Campaign” to help elderly clean their homes and provide healthy food and daily necessities.
Macau Telecom, a subsidiary of CITIC Telecom International, has promoted information technology over the years and is committed to fostering local IT professionals. In 2019, the 34th China Adolescents Science and Technology Innovation Contest was held in Macau, with 35 representatives from 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities across the country, including Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Representatives from 52 countries and regions including Africa, North America and South America also participated. Macau Telecom participated in the event and presented five “Digital Macau” Special Awards to recognise and reward young people who made outstanding and innovative achievements in information technology, smart applications, cloud applications, IoT technology and other aspects.
Carrying out emergency rescue
CITIC Offshore Helicopter actively participated in maritime search and rescue and emergency rescue work. It mobilised five helicopters to the East China Sea region for more than 30 hours and completed the evacuation of more than 700 people from 16 helipads before the arrival of Typhoon Taba. The Team was given a flag of appreciation for their brave actions. What’s more, Haitong sent four helicopters and 26 crew members to Sichuan Muli, Shanxi Qinyuan, and other places to carry about fire and disaster fire actions by aerial firefighting. The Team used a helicopter bucket to sprinkle water and successfully extinguished the forest fires in these two places and was respectfully named as the “Air Rescue Iron Army”. Our 35th Antarctic Scientific Research Team completed material lifting, personnel transport and other flight support tasks and received the unanimous recognition by the Scientific Research Team.
- CITIC Offshore Helicopter takes part in a forest firefighting mission. The picture shows that water delivery for aerial firefighting.
- CITIC Offshore Helicopter lifted supplies for the “Snow Dragon” ship on China’s 35th Antarctic expedition.
Community involvement overseas
CITIC Mining International and Robina Town Police and Aboriginal Youth Centre, an NGO in Australia, co-organised the first “Sino Iron Mile-CITIC Australian Mining Project Charity Race” at the CITIC Australian Mining project site. Numerous partipants took part in the event, including CITIC Australian Mining employees, contractors, business partners and Robina town police officers. More than AUS$2,000 was raised for supporting activities of the Youth Centre. In addition, CITIC Mining International continued to sponsor the Clontarf Foundation to support the education of indigenous people in remote areas of Australia, by sponsoring actvities of the annual National Aboriginal and Islander Day Celebration Committee as well as community art and sports awards in remote areas. In addition, we organised career talks for high school students in the project area to encourage and promote the education of adolescent women and indigenous adolescents.
On 19 July 2019, the CITIC (Angola) Centennial Vocational School held the first graduation ceremony for a total of 66 students. Since its establishment, CITIC Centennial Vocational School has provided free training and accommodation for 386 young people from under- privileged families and helped them find jobs. The outstanding performance of graduates has been recognised by the Chinese and Angola Governments, the industry and the public.
CITIC Construction is working on some social housing projects in Angola and Venezuela. In Angola, we developed a city operation system plan and provided professional training for seven major systems, including municipal power, water supply and irrigation systems. Joint operations of substations and water purification plants is to be carried out to truly drive the development and energising the community. In Venezuela, we donated furniture to every household Tiuna Social Housing Project.
Caring and serving the community
In 2019, tens of thousands of CITIC Volunteers provided community service in more than 30 cities and regions, including Beijing, Hebei, Henan, Chongqing, and Jiangsu, to help the disabled, raise education funds, and protect the environment by tree planting.
Forge ahead with the motherland - youth voluntary service by six regions
To celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of PRC, more than 270 CITIC youth volunteers from six regions, including Central, Eastern, Southern, Southwest, North and Northeast China, jointly took part in the youth volunteer service activity.
CITIC Hong Kong and Macau Staff Association Held Volunteer Symposium
The volunteer team of CITIC Hong Kong and Macau Staff Association has grown from a dozen in the beginning to more than 40 now. The Association carried out a variety of activities in 2019, including a seminar that attracted a total of 36 volunteers from 13 CITIC branches in Hong Kong. At the seminar, our volunteers expressed themselves and talked about their own feelings about volunteering and suggested how the volunteer team should organise. Through this seminar, the mutual understanding between volunteers was enhanced which laid a solid foundation for CITIC’s volunteers to further develop and fulfill its social responsibilities in Hong Kong.
Community service highlights
