This paper examines the relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Financial Performance (CFP) using panel data for 228 Chinese mineral listed firms from 2010 to 2013 with Pooled Least Squares regression analysis. Our study considers five different sublevel CSR issues—shareholder responsibility, employee responsibility, environmental responsibility, public responsibility, and supplier, customer and consumer responsibility—in capturing the effects of CSR elements on CFP. The estimation results show the different effects of each sublevel CSR issue on CFP. Overall, shareholder, employee responsibility, environmental responsibility, supplier, customer and consumer responsibility have significant relationships with CFP, which are the stakeholders who have the closest linkage with firm operations. Meanwhile, public responsibility outside the firm does not show significant interaction with CFP, which is why many mineral firms ignore the public interest and this leads to conflicts. Shareholder responsibility has the most significant positive effect on CFP. Supplier, customer and consumer responsibility and environmental responsibility usually have negative effects on CFP as costs increase. Moreover, all 228 listed mineral firms that were selected in this paper have been classified into five sub-sectors: the extractive industry, metal fabrication industry, oil and gas industry, gas and water-related industry, and oil-producing equipment industry, based on the Industry Classification Benchmark (ICB). Our study shows that the differences in the relationship between CSR and CFP for five sublevel industries are due to industry characteristics. If the government wants to solve these conflicts and positively encourage firms to adopt CSR, it is necessary to create a mining development environment whereby firm profits are closely tied to CSR.

The reform of water management in China is still in progress, and the pricing of water resources is undertaken in parallel, with a divide between irrigation water and pipe water associated with different users: The supply of irrigation water is regulated by local government and that of pipe water is operated by the production sector of pipe water. Based on a literature review and an interview survey of farmers, this study incorporated the water parallel pricing system of China within a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, where the drought of 2000 is simulated. The 16 provincial irrigation water supplies and their subsidies were also estimated and introduced into this CGE model. The results demonstrated that the effects on the macro-economy were insignificant. However, the effects on agricultural production, particularly on farming production mainly cultivated in northern areas, were significant. Most farming production sectors employed more capital and labor to prevent losses in output from drought. Agricultural labor was shifted from non-farming agricultural production sectors into farming. Both urban and rural households suffered severe losses in welfare and food consumption, even though they benefited from the additional income. Moreover, rural households suffering the worst losses were located in both northern and southern areas.