A social enterprise is an enterprise which achieves its social objectives through commercial means. It engages in public welfare and mobilizes social resources by market adjustment mechanisms. It has rigorous social objectives, such as creating jobs and providing public services that have wide societal value.

Our research shows that there are several types of social enterprise: the type which considers the market to be dominant (in the United States and Japan), the type which considers the government to be dominant (in Britain, South Korea and Hong Kong) and the pattern which considers civil society to be dominant (in Latin American countries).

Despite the fact that the concept of social enterprise is less widely accepted in China, there are also social enterprises in the country. The more mature ones include Canyou Group and Green Tomato Ltd. which are attracting increasing attention.

In order to know the profit patterns of social enterprises and their status in China, we visited two representative social enterprises — Green Tomato Ltd. and Canyou Group — between December 2011 and January 2012.

The profit patterns of social enterprises can be divided into three types:

Type one is based on service. Take Green Tomato as an example, a social enterprise that uses its own personnel, sets up its own market and provides service to end users.

The second type is based on products. This type of social enterprise relies on the final products as carriers of production and makes profit through constantly lowering production costs with its knowledge and cutting-edge technology.

The third type is based on knowledge value-added. With the knowledge explosion and the Internet, the profit pattern of social enterprises has changed from being based on traditional terminal products and processing to being based on value-added knowledge and information.

The social enterprises that shoulder social responsibility gain a higher public profile which helps them receive support. On the contrary, self-sustained enterprises will not gain such recognition, which means that the speed and scale of their development will be correspondingly affected.