State firms lead way on corporate social responsibility reports

State-owned enterprises have outperformed private and foreign-invested companies in producing and disclosing their corporate social responsibility reports.

This is according to a report on Thursday by the Research Center for Corporate Social Responsibility under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Xinhuanet, an online news provider of the Xinhua News Agency.

The report is based on analysis and evaluation of more than 880 companies' corporate social responsibility reports.

It also said companies in China are not enthusiastic about collecting and making public information about corporate social responsibility that has a social or environmental impact but lacks financial significance to investors.

Among the 25 targeted industries, telecommunications, power suppliers and manufacturers topped the rankings list with highest-quality reports on corporate social responsibility, while real estate companies performed worst, the report said.

Zhong Hongwu, one of the writers of the report, urged companies to work harder to improve their corporate social responsibility reporting, to ensure their reports are reader-friendly, have sufficient statistics to back up their arguments, are balanced in content, and comparable to their counterparts in the same industry.

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