通用汽车(口译).docVIP

Good morning, everybody, it’s great to be here and I thank the organizers for inviting General Motors to participate in this important conference. Over the years, the APEC CEO Summit has developed into a crucial forum for dialogue and action on issues that cut across not only the Pacific Rim but all countries. This morning’s topic, Global Corporate Social Responsibility, is an example of an issue that truly does cut across all borders. The world we live in today truly is a global village. It’s a small world, and all companies are under a microscope. To set the stage for our panel discussion, I would like to offer just a few observations and comments based on General Motors’ broad global footprint and our long history as a corporate citizen of many different countries. Let me say first that it’s especially appropriate that we are discussing these issues here in China. China has opened its economy faster and more broadly than most observers would have imagined. Yet that opening also highlights many of the well-publicized fears of foreign investment, market integration and globalization. The critics express fear, fear that the process of globalization and the global corporation involved in it may undermine national authority, local culture and the national environment. Speaking from my own experience and that of General Motors, a company that has done business around the world for nearly a hundred years and now has operations in around 200 countries, I believe these concerns are misplaced. The data show that global corporations play a positive role in improving income and working conditions, in caring for the environment, in improving education and in raising living standards in general. That role starts, of course, with the business itself. Companies make the invaluable social contribution of generating jobs, transferring managerial and technological know-how, providing training, and generating tax revenues for governments. Those things are the essentials of a