Sustainability Reporting Practices of Chinese Listed Companies

Abstract

The aim of my work is to study how Chinese listed companies write their sustainability reports. To start with, I am going to introduce the concept of sustainability in China. Nowadays, China is one of the most emerging economies all over the world. On the one hand, its economy has been growing at an extraordinary rate. On the other hand, its extremely rapid development has caused several negative impacts, particularly on the environment and consequently on the whole population. Sustainability in China is an extremely recent idea. Only a few years ago, after having perceived the dangerous consequences of the rapid economic growth of China, the government decided to implement a greener economic pattern of development and started to encourage local enterprises to disclose non-financial information in order to enhance their sustainability performance as well as their reputation widely. As a result, more and more Chinese companies are publishing sustainability reports over the years. The central question of my work is what guidelines Chinese listed companies refer to when preparing their sustainability reports. In the first chapter, I am going to describe international and national standards and guidelines, after having studied and compared the different guidelines. The international guidelines I am going to explain in the chapter are those published by Global Reporting Initiative (GRI G3 and G4), International Organization for Standardization (ISO 26000) and United Nations Global Compact (The Ten Principles and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development). Finally, I am going to consider the Oil and gas industry guidance on voluntary sustainability reporting, issued by the cooperation of three international association: the global oil and gas industry association for environmental and social issues, the American Petroleum Institute and International Association of Oil & Gas Producers. At the same time, the national guidelines I am going to describe are those published by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (Guidelines on Central State-Owned Enterprises), the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS – CSR 3.0), the Stock Exchanges of Shanghai (SSE), Shenzhen (SZSE) and Hong Kong (SEHK). Within the chapter, I am going to underline the areas, categories and items that involve the disclosure of sustainability information and enable companies to evaluate their performance in terms of economic, environmental and social influences. The second chapter is dedicated to the literature review. I am going to explain the concept of sustainability, analysing theoretical and empirical studies concerning sustainability reporting in China. The third chapter represents the focus of my work, which is the methodology and the analysis of the sample. I am going to analyse a sample of Chinese listed companies, which published their sustainability reports both in Chinese and in English. I am going to examine the English version of the reports. Companies operate in various sectors and most of them are listed on the Shanghai and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges. In this chapter, I am planning to develop a framework that contains three levels of analysis of the information. These levels are represented by subject areas, sub-subject areas and items referring to the sustainability dimensions of economy, environment and society. The framework has its origins in the analysed items included in the above-mentioned guidelines, both international and national. In addition to this, I am going to look for the disclosed information within each sustainability report that are related to each different item of the framework. Disclosed information can be qualitative, quantitative or both. In the fourth chapter, I am going to reach the results of my work, which will answer the questions I mentioned above. Finally, I am going to reach the conclusions of my work.