Yuan, Li2019-09-252019-09-252010-02-272008http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12424/173967Any corporation is operating in society and must utilize social resources to gain profit from society, and thus must bear social responsibility. The author argues that corporation social responsibility consists of two principle parts: (1) concern about employees, environment, and resources, and these have to be done by any corporation; (2) from society, for society, and of society. Generally speaking, when a country has gone into an industrial economy from the agricultural economy, the polarization of wealth and poverty emerges. If the gap is too wide, it will cause social turmoil, and thus the gap has to be narrowed by the third distribution. The first distribution is “distribution according to work”: it relies on the principle of priority by efficiency from where the gap of wealth and poverty comes; the second distribution is adjusted through government’s taxation to establish social security system so as to reach the first equilibrium; the third distribution is carried out with voluntary helps from the affluent class by all manners of measures to the disadvantaged in the community. The third distribution often is greater than the previous two distributions in developed nations, in where philanthropic contributions from the haves exceed the total payments of individuals’ income tax and estate duty. Such doing helps ensure basic social harmony, and today, China is still at her start of a run, far from enough. The author believes that the major path the affluent class to help the disadvantaged should be participating in the supply of social public goods and services such as education that is the core foundation for building a harmonious society. The cause for the development of Chinese private corporations is closely linked to China’s reform and open-up, and the author feels that since the commencement of the reform, Chinese private corporations have all along been in the flourishing spring. Along with the increasingly stronger supports from the Party and the Government, Chinese private corporations’ development can be said like a load of bricks and like blazes. Many an owner of a corporation became one of those who had been encouraged to become rich before others. But a coin must have two sides, and while our national economy and private corporations have been on the rapid rise, the gap of wealth and poverty is getting wider too. China’s current Gini coefficient gets close to 0.48, up from 0.22 at the beginning of 1980s and representing more than a double increase. As the warning line internationally recognized is 0.4 and the serious situation recorded is 0.6, so China’s current situation shouldn’t be neglected. What is more serious is that from today’s tendency, the gap seems to be widening further. Thereby, the following problems have recently become a heated topic that we all care about: the relationship of those (most are private corporations) who have become rich before others with their social responsibility. In short, should the affluent class bear the social responsibility? And how they bear the social responsibility? In fact, it doesn’t a mere question of moral duty of owners of private corporations but the question of how private corporations look on and deal with the social responsibility problem.engWith permission of the license/copyright holdersocial ethicsresponsibilitycorporationsEconomic ethicsBusiness ethicsEthics of economic systemsLabour/professional ethicsPreprint