2006 China Company Law

Article 5 In conducting business operations, a company shall comply with the laws and administrative regulations, social morality, and business morality. It shall act in good faith, accept the supervision of the government and general public, and bear social responsibilities.

2004 China Company Law

Article 5 A company shall operate independently with all its assets, and be responsible for its own profits and losses.

Explanation: This provision had stipulated the duty which has to be fulfilled by the company..

After the revision of the company law, the related content on the state-owned enterprises are deleted, and the social responsibility a company has to assume is specified.

The companies, as the basic units of social economic activities, and as civil subjects, whose legitimate rights and interests are protected, are requested to undertake the certain social responsibility: (1) The company must abide by the law, the administrative rules and regulations. Its business activities should be carried out legally. These are the most important duties of a company. (2) The company should observe social morality and business ethics. The social morality refers to the public moral standard by which each social subject should abide must in its contact process. The business ethics refers to the ethic standard that should be followed in conducting business activity. These two kinds of standards mutually permeate in the activities conducted by the market subjects, preferably playing supplementary role to the law. The company, as an entity that has the widespread relation with aspects of social economy, should observe social morality and business ethics, and accept the bound of norms. Social morality and the business ethics should be explicitly stipulated in law as a set of legal norms to facilitate the form of the fine management attitude and business integrity and safeguard the public interest and economic order.