Building on large-scale resource-based expansion in manufacturing sectors, China has enjoyed unprecedented growth. Yet its related social and environmental costs are becoming overwhelmingly high to the extent that sustainability has become a major concern for policymakers and management practitioners home and abroad. We explore the nexus between corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice and sustainability-led innovation (SLI) in automotive joint ventures (JVs) in China. Building on institutional theory, we envisaged a multiple-case study to investigate whether/how the practice of CSR fosters the development of sustainability-led innovation in three leading automotive JVs in China – BMW Brilliance, Fujian Benz and SAIC Volkswagen. Drawing from the publicized disclosure contents of the CASS-CSR 4.0 and Global Report Initiative 2019, cast study results suggest that firms apply a hybridization approach to practice CSR, nurturing the operational optimization in the development of SLI, but not the organizational transformation and system change levels. Theoretically, our study contributes to two interrelated literatures - CSR and sustainability-led innovation. It offers the first (to our knowledge) CSR in China into the development of sustainability-led innovation. Empirically, our study sheds light in how joint venture actors with different cultures and social values, practice CSR in a cooperative manner that eventually leads to sustainability-led innovation, providing an alternative option to policymakers and managers who used to divorce CSR from business/economic objectives.