In a new article for The Diplomat, titled “Will China Rewrite the Rules of Global Supply Chains?” China Labor Watch Executive Director Li Qiang examines China’s growing effort to shape the standards governing corporate responsibility, labor rights, and supply-chain due diligence worldwide.
As the United States and Europe strengthen forced-labor and supply-chain rules, Beijing is developing and promoting its own frameworks. China recently barred Chinese organizations and individuals from cooperating with the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA), while Chinese industry associations such as the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals & Chemicals Importers and Exporters (CCCMC) have developed alternative due-diligence standards that are gaining international recognition and participation from multinational companies.
The article traces this shift from China’s traditional role as a participant in Western-led compliance systems toward becoming a global rule-maker. New Chinese standards address forced labor, human rights due diligence, labor compliance, and corporate responsibility, while China’s 2026 Regulation on Outbound Investment explicitly calls for protecting workers’ rights abroad and for China to participate actively in developing international investment rules.
The article argues that this emerging competition is not simply between stronger and weaker labor standards, but between different models of supply-chain governance. Western systems generally emphasize transparency, independent assessment, and risk identification, while China’s emerging approach gives greater weight to state oversight, information security, and Chinese institutions as standard setters.
Ultimately, the article argues that who writes the rules matters less than whether those rules actually improve workers’ conditions. Competition between China and Western countries could benefit workers—but only if both sides can demonstrate that their standards produce meaningful improvements in practice.
The full article is available here.
Image by Pixabay.
