Corporate human rights police should start by looking in the mirror

I AM ALL in favour of corporate responsibility to more than shareholders alone. The United Nations has a set of rules called the UN Norms and the world would be a better place if all companies observed their provisions for human rights.

But when two Hong Kong University researchers made that point in an article we published yesterday on our opinions page, 'Hong Kong Inc's human rights test', they forgot about what the shareholders might say. Corporate responsibility does not start in the boardroom. It starts in the stock market.

The two, Richard Welford and Jonathan Hills, were concerned primarily, in both this opinion piece and a larger study they published, with breaches of the UN norms in countries in which Hong Kong companies operate.

Let us leave aside the specific rights and wrongs of these allegations. I am not competent to comment on whether our firms are complicit in individual reported cases of bonded child labour in India. The real questions to me are rather who should bear the blame if they are complicit and on whose shoulders the responsibility should then fall for correcting these practices.

Messrs Welford and Hills appear to end their search at the boardroom. I would go further and point the finger at you, well, me too. We are the ultimate beneficiaries of what these companies do to make money. The fault, if fault there is, lies in the end with us.

Now, of course, your immediate response to this is to plead not guilty. First of all, you may not have much money and never have made an investment in the stock market. Therefore, you say, you are free of blame.

Are you sure? You have a holding in the Mandatory Provident Fund, which invests in the stock market, and you have some say in where your MPF money goes. You may also hold other pension funds or have put money in mutual funds that invest in the stock market. In fact, if you have any savings at all, look at them closely before you swear that you do not have an investment interest in listed companies.