GoldenBee Research on CSR Reporting in China 2022 Released

The prolonged and repeated COVID-19 and the unstable global economic recovery have led more enterprises to apply social responsibility management or ESG management tools to improve their ability to cope with risks, enhance communication with stakeholders, and ensure their healthy and sustainable development. The CSR report is an important carrier for enterprises to disclose their ideas, strategies, methods, actions and performance in fulfilling their social responsibilities. It is also an important form of communication between enterprises and society. So it is of great significance to systematically evaluate the CSR reports issued by enterprises in China and put forward suggestions to help themachieve sustainable development.
 

During the 15th International Conference on CSR Reporting in China on 2 December, Guan Zhusun, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of GoldenBee Consulting, introduced that GoldenBee has collected and assessed the CSR report publicly issued in Chinese Mainland by October 31 every year for many years. The GoldenBee "Three Excellence" theoretical model of CSR reporting, namely excellent basic information disclosure, excellent response to core content, and excellent compliance with basic principles, was applied in report assessment and research. 

Based on GoldenBee CSR Report Assessment System 2022, 2,300 CSR reports released by companies in Chinese mainland from January 1 to October 31, 2022 are collected and assessed. The results is disclosed in the GoldenBee Research on CSR Reporting in China 2022, with in-depth analyses on the characteristics of CSR reports in 2022, and suggestions on the development of CSR reporting in China, which provides reference for enterprises to prepare high-quality CSR reports.

The index of six report dimensions has been improved. The growth of completeness, credibility, comparability and materiality index is relatively stable. The overall growth of readability and innovativeness index is significant because of the low scoring base, enabling great enhancement.
 

Companies in China pay more attention to the information saturation, timeliness as well as management and disclosure of material topics of the report when releasing CSR reports, which promotes the overall level of the report to the "catch-up" stage.
 

The CSR report disclosure on 7 types of stakeholders including suppliers, customers, environment, employees, media, regulators, and peers is increasing, with suppliers, regulators and peers seeing the largest increase.
 

The index disclosure rates of the obligatory responsibility, expected responsibility and discretional responsibility maintains a stepwise decrease, which conforms to the practice characteristics of corporate social responsibility in China.
 

The overall social responsibility reporting index of various industries shows a wave-like lift. In 2022, the report quality of the financial and insurance industry is the highest and enter the "excellent" level; The report quality of seven industries, including production and supply industries of electricity, coal, water and gas has entered the "catch-up" stage.
 

The report quality of enterprises of different ownerships shows an overall upward trend, of which central SOEs remains at the highest level. The number of CSR reports of private enterprises has increased for five consecutive years. The gap between the report quality of enterprises of different ownerships has been narrowed.
 

The total number of CSR reports released has a large growth, and the number of reports from growing enterprises has increased significantly. The report quality of leading enterprises is higher, which will break through the "catch-up" stage.
 

The report quality of companies listed on SSE, SZSE, and HKEx has significantly improved year on year, while mainland companies listed on the HKEx have higher report quality.
 

The CSR reports issued in China has seen a significant increase in internationalization. The number of bilingual reports in Chinese and English has grown rapidly. More enterprises use international standards as a reference for report preparation.

1. Transparent CSR fulfillment

Improve the understanding of CSR reports, increase disclosure of CSR fulfillment, enhance management transparency, consciously accept social supervision, and establish a responsible corporate image.

2. Management driven 

Improve CSR management, strengthen management-related information disclosure, and promote the organic integration of CSR concept and corporate management.

3. Performance improvement

Enhance the report credibility and performance comparability, highlight CSR performance, and improve the disclosure rate of key performance.

4. Trend follower 

Keep up with the development trend, strengthen ESG disclosure, and pay attention to the information disclosure of issues such as carbon peak, rural vitalization, biodiversity, and sustainable consumption.

5. Diverse communication 

Strengthen cooperation and exchanges in the industry, benchmark first-class enterprises and national standards, and create high-quality CSR report models.