On April 24, 2026, the Sustainable Development Sub-forum of the 2026 Shanghai Forum was held at the World Reception Hall. Jointly organized by the School of Management at Fudan University and SK Group, the sub-forum was themed "Corporate Social Value Creation: The Synergistic Path of Technology Empowerment and Ecosystem-wide Win-Win Development." It brought together corporate executives, scholars, and international guests from manufacturing, technology, consumer goods, new materials, culture and tourism, energy, and other sectors for in-depth discussions on technology empowerment, ecosystem collaboration, ESG practices, and social value creation.

This marked the second consecutive year that the School of Management at Fudan University has hosted the Sustainable Development Sub-forum of the Shanghai Forum. As an important component of the Shanghai Forum, a high-level platform for international dialogue, this year's sub-forum focused on how enterprises, amid high-quality development, green transition, and the reshaping of the global competitive landscape, can use technological innovation as the engine and ecosystem collaboration as the pathway to promote the coordinated co-creation of social and commercial value.

At the opening session, Zhimin Chen, Vice President of Fudan University, delivered congratulatory remarks. Weitao Zhao, Associate Dean of the School of Management at Fudan University, and Sung Taek Park, Chairman of SK China, also addressed the forum, which was moderated by Yang Liu of SK China.

In his remarks, Vice President Zhimin Chen noted from a broader perspective that enterprises have historically created goods and services, but have also generated externalities. In the past, attention focused more on reducing negative externalities. Today, however, enterprises are increasingly aware that they must also think proactively about creating positive externalities and social value. He observed that under the leadership of Chairman Tae-won Chey, SK Grouphas placed social value alongside economic value and, through initiatives such as its Corporate Social Value Laboratory, has advanced the development of more scientific and institutionalized social value measurement systems. This, he said, offers important inspiration for the development of ESG, the quantification of social value, and the development of industry methodologies among Chinese enterprises. He also noted that the School of Management at Fudan University has long paid close attention to corporate ESG practices and social value creation, and expressed the hope that the forum would promote deeper exchange and cooperation between academia and industry in best practices, methodological research, and standards development.

In his speech, Weitao Zhao stated that as the new wave of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation deepens, sustainable development has become a major issue of global concern. Enterprises are not only important creators of economic value, but also important bearers of social responsibility. How to better coordinate economic, social, and ecological benefits has become a key question that enterprises pursuing high-quality development must answer. He pointed out that technology empowerment is opening up new space for enterprises to create social value, while ecosystem collaboration is crucial to building broader and more enduring capabilities for social value creation. Only by integrating the concept of ecosystem-wide win-win development into corporate strategy, deepening collaboration with upstream and downstream partners, research institutions, and social organizations, and promoting synergy across industrial, innovation, and value chains, can enterprises truly build future-oriented capabilities for social value creation.

Sung Taek Park stated in his remarks that no single enterprise can independently achieve sustainability in the fullest sense. If enterprises are to achieve robust and long-term development, they cannot focus solely on economic value, but must also continuously attend to the needs and concerns of all stakeholders. SK Group has always regarded the well-being of its members and stakeholders as a core value, and since 2018 has consistently measured and publicly disclosed the social value it creates in monetary terms. In 2024, SK Group created social value amounting to US$18.9 billion, equivalent to 10 percents of its global sales revenue. In his view, technology is no longer merely a tool for industrial development; it has become a core driver for solving shared challenges, narrowing social gaps, and creating a sustainable future. He noted that the forum's focus on "technology empowerment" and "ecosystem-wide win-win development" was both forward-looking and highly relevant.

Focusing on "Technology Empowerment": How Enterprises Transform Innovation into Social Value

The first half of the sub-forum was themed "Technology Empowerment for Corporate Social Value Creation." Four corporate representatives from different industries shared their views and engaged in discussions on the core logic, pathways, and challenges of technology-enabled social value creation.

A New ESG Journey for "Instruments of National Importance": From Technological Breakthroughs to Industry Standards

Li Sun, Member of the Party Committee, General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer, and Board Secretary of Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co., Ltd., delivered a presentation titled "Forging Instruments of National Importance and Opening a New ESG Journey," sharing the company's practices in technological innovation, green transition, and standards development.

He noted that, as a listed company under China Communications Construction Company Limited, Zhenhua Heavy Industries focuses on core businesses such as port machinery, offshore engineering equipment, and steel structures, and is committed to building a world-class equipment manufacturing enterprise with global competitiveness. With technological innovation as its central support, the company has continued to create "instruments of national importance." Its products have entered 111 countries and regions worldwide, achieved more than 50 world-firsts, accumulated more than 2,000 patents, and won multiple National Science and Technology Progress Awards.

In terms of green transition, Zhenhua Heavy Industries has promoted low-carbon upgrading in port shipping and offshore engineering through automated port equipment, intelligent operation and maintenance platforms, wind power installation platforms, and green certification systems. The company has taken the lead in the global port machinery industry in achieving full carbon footprint management coverage for its main products, and has led the drafting of the world's first technical specification for quantifying the carbon footprint of port crane products. Li Sun argued that the core of technology-enabled social value lies in taking market orientation as the starting point, collaborative innovation as the pathway, ESG principles as the foundation, and long-termism as the driver of continuous technological iteration and value release.

VisionBlue: Protecting the Blue Planet through Technology and Closed-loop Business Logic

Xinmei Du, Chief Sustainability Officer of VisionBlue, spoke on "Blue Circular Solutions for Marine Waste," sharing the company's technological pathway and business logic in the field of marine waste management.

She explained that marine pollution control has long faced the challenges of being difficult to detect, difficult to recover, and difficult to sustain. By building three interconnected networks - a marine big data platform, "marine cloud warehouses" for pollution control equipment in near-port areas, and marine waste recycling plants - VisionBlue has created an integrated solution spanning front-end collection to high-value downstream utilization. Through traceable blockchain technology and a closed industrial value chain, the company transforms marine waste into recycled resources accepted by the market, thereby addressing ecological problems while establishing a sustainable business model.

Xinmei Du emphasized that economic and social benefits are not in opposition. Only by bringing governance challenges into a market-based and sustainable value cycle can governments, enterprises, communities, and the public truly be mobilized to participate together. In her view, the greatest significance of technology empowerment lies in helping enterprises build closed-loop, replicable models of social value creation.

L'Oréal: Making Sustainability Part of Products, Platforms, and Ecosystems

Tingyuan Lan, Sustainability Director of L'Oréal, shared under the theme "L'Oréal for the Future." She reviewed L'Oréal's 45 years of ongoing exploration in the field of sustainability, emphasizing that for L'Oréal, sustainability is not merely a KPI, but an integral part of its core business logic.

Lan introduced that L'Oréal has achieved 100 percents sustainable energy coverage across all of its global operating facilities, and continues to promote sustainable raw material substitution, packaging reduction and recycling, near-zero supply chain transition, and low-carbon consumer participation. L'Oréal has proposed four pillars - leading climate transition, protecting natural resources, promoting circularity, and empowering community development - and has invested EUR 100 million globally to establish a sustainable innovation accelerator to identify innovative solutions in low-carbon packaging, green molecules, recycled materials, and related areas.

She particularly emphasized that sustainable innovation is the result of collaboration across the entire value chain - from raw material traceability, packaging design, manufacturing, and logistics to consumer use and recycling. Every stage, she noted, requires joint efforts driven by both technology and ecosystem partners. Only when sustainability is truly embedded in a company's DNA and becomes a shared culture embraced by employees, brands, and supply chains can enterprises achieve long-term and resilient transformation.

Kuangshun Photosensitive: Reconstructing the Anti-corrosion Track through Materials Innovation

Qibin Zhang, Deputy General Manager of Jiangsu Kuangshun Photosensitivity New-Material Co., Ltd., shared under the theme "Sustainable Development Practices for Creating Multiple Values through Technological Innovation," explaining how upstream functional materials enterprises can create greater environmental and economic value for downstream customers through technological innovation.

Zhang noted that the traditional anti-corrosion market has long relied on highly polluting, high-VOC solvent-based coating solutions, with high emissions, high energy consumption, and high maintenance costs. Through new materials solutions such as graphene modification, the company has achieved systematic optimization in environmental performance, safety, carbon reduction, and life-cycle costs. In extreme scenarios such as marine engineering equipment, these innovative materials not only reduce VOC emissions and energy consumption, but also extend service life and reduce repeated construction, thereby significantly lowering customers’total life-cycle costs.

He emphasized that sustainable innovation is, in essence, a strategic business choice. Enterprises cannot remain trapped in low-level price competition in traditional markets; instead, they must gain deep insight into customer pain points and provide new solutions around real needs such as environmental compliance, efficiency gains, and long-term returns. Only when enterprises truly create higher-level value for users can technological innovation be transformed into sustainable competitiveness.

Roundtable Discussion: Technological Innovation Is Not Optional, but a Fundamental Question for Enterprises Facing the Future

In the roundtable discussion in the first half, the four guests further distilled several shared understandings around the question of how technology can empower social value. They generally agreed that the essence of technology-enabled social value does not lie in "innovation for innovation's sake," but in being guided by markets and real needs, and in transforming technological capabilities into systematic solutions that address public problems, improve industrial efficiency, and advance green transition.

Li Sun emphasized that technological innovation is a necessary path for enterprises, not an option. Xinmei Du proposed that market-based value loops should be built through both technology and business logic. Tingyuan Lan argued that innovation must embed sustainability logic throughout the entire chain, from source to consumption, and depend on broad ecosystem collaboration. Qibin Zhang stressed that the significance of technological innovation lies in helping enterprises break away from low-level price competition and identify new coordinates of value between sustainability and efficiency.

In response to the question of how to balance innovation input and long-term returns, the guests unanimously agreed that enterprises must view sustainable investment over a longer time horizon. Cost is not the only criterion. The key lies in whether enterprises can build genuinely differentiated value around user pain points, social needs, and industry trends, and whether they can promote scaling and wider adoption through multi-party collaboration.

Focusing on "Ecosystem-wide Win-Win Development": How Enterprises Create Long-term Value through Multi-stakeholder Collaboration

The second half of the forum was themed "Ecosystem-wide Win-Win Development for Enhancing Corporate Social Value." Four guests shared perspectives from multinational enterprises' local responsibility, symbiosis between culture-tourism and communities, collaboration across energy industry chains, and regenerative cities and energy communities, discussing how enterprises can co-create value with governments, communities, employees, supply chains, and the natural environment.

SK hynix: Two Decades of Commitment in China and a Locally Rooted "Cycle of Well-being"

Yong Up Lim, Director of the Hospital Initiative Group at SK hynixWuxi, delivered a presentation titled "Creating Social Value: SK hynix's Deeply Rooted Path of Responsibility," sharing the company's long-term local practices in China over the past 20 years.

He introduced that since entering Wuxi in 2007, SK hynixhas upheld the principle that it is "not a passerby, but committed to coexisting and flourishing together with the local community," and has made sustained investments in environmental protection, education, healthcare, and community building. In 2016, the company established China's first nonprofit foundation initiated by a foreign-invested enterprise. It donates a fixed US$812,000 annually and, by 2025, had contributed more than RMB 45 million in total, organized 3,800 philanthropic activities, and benefited 120,000 individuals cumulatively.

Yong Up Lim specifically noted that through establishing social enterprises and building schools and general hospitals, the company has gradually transformed philanthropy from one-off donations into a systematic and long-term model of social value creation. He stated that only by deeply connecting with government priorities, real community needs, and professional partners can enterprises truly create sustainable local social value.

Songtsam: Taking the Global Stage from One's Own Doorstep

Zhishi Qilin, CEO of Songtsam Group, delivered a speech titled "Songtsam: Taking the Global Stage from One's Own Doorstep," explaining how the company has activated local culture, promoted community development, and reshaped the relationship between people and nature in northwestern Yunnan, western Sichuan, and the Tibet region through culture-tourism.

Over 26 years, Songtsam has built 20 high-quality boutique hotels in high-altitude regions and, by connecting nodes along the Ancient Tea Horse Road, has provided ecological and cultural travel experiences for high-net-worth clients. Zhishi Qilin observed that Songtsam's most valuable asset is not the hotels themselves, but more than 1,600 employees and the thousands of families and villages behind them. Ninety-two percents of its employees come from local communities, and many, though originally with limited formal education, have through long-term cultivation grown into managers and key service staff.

In his sharing, he focused on cases such as Songtsam's collaboration with local governments and communities to build wineries, the establishment of room-revenue sharing mechanisms with remote villages, and joint work with conservation institutions to protect snow leopard habitats. These examples illustrated how the company has integrated governments, communities, monasteries, conservation centers, and tourists into a long-term symbiotic ecosystem built on shared values.

Trinasolar: Embedding "Win-Win" into the Global Industrial Chain

Xiao Wu, Vice President of Trinasolar Co., Ltd., shared under the theme "Trinasolar's ESG Development, Transformation, and Leadership." She noted that as a global new energy enterprise, Trinasolar must not only improve its own ESG performance, but also empower supply chains and customers to jointly achieve carbon reduction and net-zero goals.

From the dimensions of global risk identification, ESG governance structure, supply chain training, and zero-carbon park construction, she systematically introduced how the company has embedded ESG requirements into business processes and connected ecosystem partners into a sustainable value community through digital platforms, financial instruments, and training mechanisms.

Xiao Wu also shared how Chinese enterprises, in the course of building overseas plants, face multiple challenges including cultural differences, compliance requirements, and community demands. In her view, genuine ecosystem-wide win-win development must be built on value alignment and interest coordination. It must both meet the development needs of local communities and transform Chinese enterprises' experience in rural revitalization and community integration into global competitiveness.

From Smart Cities to Regenerative Cities: Fabrizio Zucca on Regenerative Systems and Co-governance

Fabrizio Zucca, founder of Strategia e Sviluppo Consultants Srl, approached the issue from the perspective of cities. In a presentation titled "From Smart Cities to Regenerative Cities," he proposed that both enterprises and cities need to move beyond a linear development logic toward regenerative systems thinking.

He pointed out that traditional smart city models have focused more on process optimization and efficiency improvement, whereas the future requires a shift toward a higher-level regenerative paradigm - one that uses artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, energy communities, the circular economy, and co-governance mechanisms to realize social resilience, ecological renewal, and value sharing. He emphasized that in creating social value, enterprises cannot focus only on their own gains. Instead, they should incorporate communities, resources, infrastructure, and stakeholders into an integrated governance framework and, through shared goals and shared responsibility, achieve the sustained creation of shared value.

Roundtable Discussion: The Key to Ecosystem-wide Win-Win Development Lies in Value Alignment and Structured Collaboration

In the roundtable discussion in the second half, the guests focused on how ecosystem-wide win-win development can be achieved when different parties' demands are not aligned.

Yong Up Lim suggested that through platform building, foundation mechanisms, and social enterprise models, enterprises can connect corporate enthusiasm, government priorities, and real community needs. Zhishi Qilin emphasized that in multi-party collaboration, the core lies in establishing a set of shared values recognized by all sides, which then becomes the basis for balancing short-term interests and long-term development. Drawing on cases of overseas plant construction and zero-carbon industrial parks, Xiao Wu pointed out that only when industrial chains, governments, communities, and capital form genuine benefit-sharing arrangements can ecosystems become sustainable.  Fabrizio Zucca argued that the essence of ESG is not merely compliance or emissions reduction, but the building of a logic of shared value creation across differing objectives.

In response to a question from the audience regarding the diversification of ESG standards and how Chinese enterprises can participate in standards-setting, Xiao Wu stated that there are indeed currently multiple parallel global ESG rules with differing frameworks. However, Chinese enterprises are gradually gaining a stronger voice, especially in areas such as new energy where they have prominent supply-chain advantages. In the future, she believes, it is entirely possible to advance mutual recognition of standards and optimize industry rules, thereby enhancing the influence of Chinese enterprises in the global ESG system.

Using the Forum as a Platform to Advance Corporate Social Value Creation

In the closing session, forum chair Qinqin Zheng, Professor and Doctoral Supervisor in the Department of Business Administration at the School of Management at Fudan University, delivered concluding remarks. She stated that centered on the two themes of "technology empowerment" and "ecosystem-wide win-win development," this sub-forum had brought together corporate representatives and scholars from different industries and countries. It featured not only rich cases from the front lines of practice, but also in-depth reflections on methods, pathways, and the logic of value creation. The forum fully demonstrated the diverse explorations undertaken by enterprises in advancing ESG and creating social value, and provided academia, industry, and policy circles with experiences and insights that are referable, discussable, and sustainable for continued deepening.

As an important component of the Shanghai Forum, the 2026 Shanghai Forum Sustainable Development Sub-forum once again demonstrated the organizers' commitment to maintaining a global perspective, advancing industry-university-research collaboration, and responding to major issues of the times. Looking ahead, the forum will continue to bring together partners from all sectors, academic institutions, and business leaders to further expand the theoretical boundaries and practical pathways of corporate social value creation, and to contribute Fudan wisdom to building a greener and more responsible commercial future.