华南美国商会会长哈利 • 赛亚丁博士是一位杰出人士。他在商业界取得了卓越成就，他事业的成功是社会、经济、环境领域可持续商业实践的成功典范。在本次采访中，我们与奥斯陆商业促进和平奖得主哈利博士面对面，就商业可持续发展的真正意义，如何践行商业道德与利润共赢，以及在商业世界如何为了实现更美好的未来进行深入探讨。
Dr. Harley Seyedin, President of the American Chamber of Commerce in South China, is an incredibly accomplished and distinguished man. Dr. Seyedin’s success in business is a shining example of socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable business practices. We sat down with the Oslo Business for Peace Award winner and discussed what sustainable business development truly is, how to reverse the stigma that sustainability and moral business practices cannot coexist with profit, and how the world of business can adapt to achieve a brighter future.
“我们就从奥斯陆商业促进和平奖及其商业促和平基金会在做的事情开始说起。在奥斯陆会议中，我们讨论了两年的问题是，什么是可持续发展。今年奥斯陆商业促进和平奖圆桌会议在5月15、16日举行，主题是 “信任”。如果社区对商业失去了信任，会怎么样？
“Let me start off with the Oslo Business for Peace Award, and what this peace foundation is trying to do with that. At the conference in Oslo, one of the things we’ve discussed the last two years is what is sustainable development? The theme for this summit on May 15th and 16th this year was trust. What has been happening over a period of time is communities have been losing trust in business.
人们对商业没有了信心，会将问题怪责于商业行为本身。失信于人的不单有政治家，连企业都会。今年的会议我们探讨如何帮助企业重获他人的信任，这个问题的前提依旧是可持续性发展是什么。很多人会认为可持续发展仅仅是种更多树，或者让地球回复本来的样貌。但想想以前的我们曾经肆无忌惮地开发资源，继而又放置不理。我们只留下了破烂的土地、污染的地方，或仅仅只是一株用来补救的植物 。
People don’t trust business. People blame problems on business. Not only have the politicians lost the trust of the people, but business has as well. What we talked about this year was how to help business regain the trust of the people. And this premise invites back into the question of what sustainable development is. Many people consider sustainable development as planting more trees or being responsible or returning the earth back to what it was when you found it. However, all we did in the past was went and exploited resources and then left. We left a big hole in the ground, left a polluted area, or left a big plant standing.
因此，我个人认为可持续发展不是无限度地开发资源，使用劳动力，消耗殆尽，而是以一种可以持续的方式使用这些资源。如果资源耗尽，我们需要有一个后续方案。也就是要让当地社区积极参与到可持续发展中来，这样即使我们离开了，他们也能够维持之前的经济水平 。要践行这一承诺，我们必须要教会当地人保护好他们的环境，让他们的经济能在我们离开后继续发展。可持续发展的关注点不仅仅是树木和水处理设施，更是你经商那个地方的人。我们可以在投资地建立一个可持续的商业模式。人们过去常说，商业就是商业，我不认同，在我看来，商业就是让社会变得更好。因此，在奥斯陆会议中，我们讨论了 “商业道德（businessworthy）” 一词。
For me, personally, I believe sustainable development is not exploiting resources and labor but utilizing them in a way that will last forever as opposed to running out. And if they run out, we need to have an answer for what follows. This means we need to involve the indigenous community in sustainable development in such a way that they can sustain themselves to the level that we brought them up to even once we’re gone. And if we do that, then naturally, we have taught the locals how to protect their own environment and how to create after we’re gone. Once you begin to look at sustainability beyond just trees and water treatment facilities and start looking at the people that live where you are doing business, you can create a sustainable business model. People used to say the business of business is business. I don’t believe that anymore. The business of business, in my opinion, is to improve society. At the summit in Oslo, we discussed the term “businessworthy”.
有人曾经问过我，这个词是什么意思？我觉得它的意思就是让你投资地的社区将你当作家人。如果他们当你是家人，你就得到了信任。用可持续发展的方式做生意远比过度开发带来更多的好处。重建信任比在初期创造信任要困难得多，相比最后失去了信任，一开始就以良性的可持续模式去投资就明智多了。能生存下来的公司都是那些赢得社区信任的公司。举一个例子，宝洁仅靠数个产品就在中国洗发水市场占据很大的份额，击败国内超过1600个其它生产商的产品。
I was asked what this meant to me, and for me it means that the community you’ve invested in thinks of you as family. If you can achieve that, you’ve achieved trust. It is actually a lot more profitable to do business in this sustainable way than to exploit. It is much smarter to invest early on and create a beneficial, sustainable model than to lose trust down the road. It is much more expensive to rebuild trust than to establish it on the front end. Companies that will survive are the ones that gain the trust of their community and their people. I’ll give you one example of that; Proctor and Gamble has a very large portion of the shampoo market in China based on a few products with which they compete with a thousand six-hundred shampoo manufacturers in China.
为什么中国人对宝洁的信任度远远超过了其它品牌？因为每一次他们购买潘婷或者海飞丝时，产品的质量都不会有丝毫的下降。要建立信任就要投资，但与在最后修复信任的损失比起来，前期的投资根本微不足道。做生意时，你与商业合作伙伴的关系跟你与客户的关系一样重要。做生意时，我总是对自己说，无论我与谁打交道，他们都跟我做着同样的事情，为自己的孩子创造更好的生活。在此过程中，如果我否定了他们这些权利，我也不会成功。
But, they still have a majority share of the market. So, why do Chinese not trust the other brands as much as P&G? Because when the Chinese buy a bottle of Pantene or Head and Shoulders, they know it is going to perform exactly like it did every time before that. To build trust you have to invest, but the investment upfront is very small compared to what you would have to invest on the other end to repair a loss of trust. In business, your relationships with your business partners are just as important as with your customers. In business deals, I always tell myself, as I look at the other person across the table from me, that whoever I’m dealing with is trying to do the same thing I am: provide for their family—trying to create a better life for their children. And in the process of the business dealings, if I’ve denied that person that right, then I’ve failed.
就算我成功了，但长远的获益必将少了。总有一个时间你赚到的比你应得的要多。如果人们能感受到你的执着与诚信，他们会一如既往地相信你。我的想法可能与大部分人不一样，但我认为做到了，以后做生意才能可持续发展，才能赚钱。我可以从我以往的商业实践中举一个案例：24年前，即1994年，世界银行投资了中国的一些基础设施项目。我来为你分析一下世界银行当时为什么要选择投资中国。论国民生产总值，中国当时是世界上第七富裕的国家。1991年，广东省高速公路总长才15公里，我说的是当时有四车道的广佛高速公路。
I may have made a little more money at that time, but the future will be less fruitful. There is always a line where you are taking more than you should. If people feel that you care and you’re fair, people will trust you every time. What I’m saying goes against the grain of what most people might say, but, for me, it is very important for sustainable, profitable business in the future. I can give you an example from my own business practices. In 1994, 24 years ago, the World Bank was providing funding for a number of infrastructural projects in China. I have to take you back a bit to see why the World Bank would be funding China, the seventh richest country in the world GDP wise. In 1991, the total length of super highways in Guangdong province was 15 kilometers. I am talking about a four lane, elevated highway that went from Guangzhou to Foshan.
在过去的25年里，广东修建了三、四千公里长的高速公路，这个成果非常让人兴奋。世界上任何一个国家和地区都不会有这样显著的发展，这就是为什么世界银行为何要在1994年资助中国公路项目的建设。世界银行要投资一个项目，是不会动用所有钱。他们提供一部分资金，然后由私人贷款机构提供剩余资金，因为世界银行投资的项目，没有哪个政府会违约。1994年世界银行投资中国的公路建设项目，都是向国际竞标，因为没有任何一家中国公司有资格投标。
Today, in Guangdong, you have easily three to four thousand kilometers of super highways that were built in the last 25 years. It is mind-blowing. Nothing has happened anywhere in the World to that magnitude. So, the World Bank was funding the construction of highway projects back in 1994. When the World Bank funds a project, they don’t put up all the money. They put up some of the money and then private lenders will lend the rest of it because no government has ever defaulted on a project in which the World Bank put up money. Now, in 1994, the World Bank was funding highways in China, and the bids were being auctioned off internationally. There was not a single Chinese company that was qualified to bid on those projects.
企业想要获得公路建设的竞标资格，必须先开始建路。也就是，建路的所有贷款都会由地方政府偿还，因为世界银行不是送钱，给的都是贷款，但是当时没有任何一家中国企业达到这些项目竞标的资格。我不喜欢这样的模式，我认为这样做完全没有道理，这简直是剥削，不符合可持续发展的理念。如果按照这样的模式，中国将要永远依赖外国企业来建造公路。所以我的公司与一家巴西建筑公司合作，那家巴西公司是我们的一个商业合作伙伴，也是拉丁美洲最大的建筑公司。然后我将西安的中国铁路工程公司也拉进来 。
To be qualified to bid as a construction company for a World Bank funded highway, you have to have built them before. So, I mean here, you had all of the loans for these highways that were going to be paid back by the local government—the World Bank wasn’t giving grants, it was a loan—and yet you did not have a single Chinese company that actually qualified to bid on those projects. I did not like that idea. I thought, this makes absolutely no sense—to me it was exploitation. That is not sustainable. Because if we keep doing this forever, China will always have to rely on outside companies to come and build highways for them. So, I teamed up my company with one of our business partners at the time, a Brazilian construction company that was the biggest construction company in Latin America. Then, I brought in China Railway Engineering, out of Xi’an.
我们组建了一个三方团队，使用巴西建筑公司的世界银行认证，竞标了新疆高速公路的六个路段。然后我把三个合伙人召集到一起，告诉他们，我们会让中国铁路工程公司完成大部分的工作，我方需派出工程师指导他们按照世界银行的标准建造公路，不是达到本地的标准就可以了，这两者有非常大的差别。计划如期竣工了，我们都赚到了钱，中国铁路工程公司因为完成了大部分的工程而获利。在项目完成之后，中国铁路工程公司成为了第一家获得世界银行项目认证的中国公路建设公司。
We created a three-way team. I used the World Bank certification of the Brazilian construction company to bid for six sections of the Xinjian highway. So, I sat the three partners down, and I told the Brazilian construction company that we were going to let the China Railway Engineering company do most of the work. And we’re going to use our engineers to teach them how to do it according to World Bank standards—which are very different than local standards. And so, we did this. We came in on time, profitable, on budget, and we all made money—China Railway made more money because they did all the work—but we still all made money. And so, after the project’s completion, China Railway became the first highway construction company certified to bid on a World Bank project in China.
在接下来的五至十年里，越来越多的中国公司开始参与建造高速公路。很多人对我的做法感到不解，因为我是在创造竞争。我只能说，是的，没错。不过这同时也为我带来了合作伙伴，因为我们之间有了相互信任的基础。如今，中国铁路建设公司成为了世界上最大的基建公司，他们在全球财富500强中排第56名。我们之间的关系仍然非常好，持续地合作其它的项目。那么，我是如何与其中一家世界级大公司合作的呢？虽然我们不是一个大型的全球企业，但我们知道如何运营国际业务。当我可以与全球最大的基建公司合作时，我也得到了银行和保险公司的关注，我的融资也变得容易多了。没错，我创造了竞争，但同时我也创造了可持续的模式。这个例子很好地诠释了什么是可持续发展，它比剥削带来更多的利益。
It opened everything up in China over the next five to ten years, and eventually, there were many Chinese companies building these highways in China. After this, many people asked me what was wrong with me because I was creating competition. And I looked at them, and I said, yes. Absolutely. But at the same time, I am creating a partner. Because there is going to be trust between me and these people. China Railway now is the largest construction company in the World. They’re 56th on the Fortune 500 list world-wide. And we are very good friends. We have partnered with each other on other projects. Now how did I manage to partner with one of the largest companies in the world? I am not a major international conglomerate, but I know how to do international business. When I can team up with the largest construction company in the world on a project, that gets the bank’s attention, that gets the insurance company’s attention, and financing becomes a lot easier. So, yes, I created competition, but at the same time, I created something sustainable. This is a good example of what sustainable development is and how it can be much more profitable than exploitation.
