Corporate Social Responsibility in the Era of 'Common Prosperity': Analysing the Changing Governmentalities of GSR in the 'CPPZ' of Zhejiang

It would be an understatement to say that the People's Republic of China (PRC) has in the past year been marked by seismic shifts in the dynamics that constitute the governing relations between business and the ruling party-state. From the abrupt cancellation of Ant Finance's hotly anticipated IPO (FT 2020) to state demands that Chinese food delivery platforms improve driver's working conditions (Reuters 2021), the overall trend seems to be toward an increasingly strident assertion of the need for corporations to align their activities with the socio-political goals of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Emblematic of these developments is the 'common prosperity' campaign, formally launched by President Xi Jinping at a meeting of the Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs in August 2021 (Qiushi 2021a). The campaign aims to tackle China's spiralling wealth inequality through measures including tax reform, poverty alleviation, and 'encouraging... businesses to contribute more to society' through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (Qiushi 2021a). While 'common prosperity' has been a feature of CPC rhetoric since being coined by Deng Xiaoping (Deng 1987), the campaign's launch is significant in 'formally placing common prosperity on the agenda', in a manner analogous to the 'harmonious society' campaign of Hu Jintao's presidency (Qiushi 2021a).

The campaign's launch has prompted increased CSR activity among Chinese corporations seeking to signal alignment to the CPC agenda, with national champions such Alibaba, Tencent and Pinduoduo pledging large amounts ($15.5B, $15B, and $1.5B respectively) to CSR (Bloomberg 2021).

The common prosperity campaign's call for for businesses to play an increasingly collaborative role in the delivery of the CPC's socio-political agenda has profound consequences for the governance of China and for the dynamics of Chinese business-government-civil society relations.

My research will deploy the Foucauldian analytic of governmentality to understand how the common prosperity campaign is changing the role of CSR within China's distinctively authoritarian system of governance, primarily through a case study of CSR activity in Zhejiang, which has been declared a 'demonstration zone for common prosperity by the CPC (Qiushi 2021b).