The necessity and prospects of promoting ethics in Chinese enterprises: Experiences of Dazhong transportation group

Abstract

The opening up of China to the outside world over the past 20 plus years has brought remarkable achievements in the transformation toward a market economy and unprecedented development opportunities for Chinese enterprises. However, these changes have generated not only opportunities, but also risks. Various defects of the rules and the functioning of markets have caused different types of disorder such as triangle debts, weak trust in enterprises, tax evasion, and the influence of money on public authorities. Given all these facts, a serious examination of the situation is called for: while establishing the market rules, is it necessary to set up an ethical "barrier" for having the economy catering for the normal needs of human beings? Indeed, the growth of the modern economy has proved the supporting function played by ethics in the maturation of a market economy. Now that China has entered the World Trade Organization (WTO), Chinese enterprises, as the main body and beneficiary of the market economy, have to shoulder the task of establishing the ethics of that market economy. The construction of ethics in Chinese enterprises has became an imperative task.