Syntao released its A Journey to Discover Values 2012-2013: A study of CSR Reporting in China. This report provides the analysis of the quantity and quality of the CSR reports in China and in-depth study of 16 key industries. This is the sixth consecutive year’s study reviewing how China’s enterprises deal with CSR reporting conducted by Syntao, China’s leading CSR consulting company. The research is under the support of Environmental Education and Communications of MEP China (CEEC of MEP China) and Oxfam Hongkong.

According to the report, the CSR reports of enterprises in China have increased dramatically during 2012 and 2013. 1705 reports were released in 2012, 1496 of which were published by the enterprises. And 209 were released by non-business organizations. Date up to August 31, 1026 reports were released in 2013. The majority of the reports were released by the state-owned enterprises, occupying 55%, dropped slightly by 3% compared to 2011.The series of Discover Values have focused on the development of the CSR reporting of enterprises in China.

The study is one of the first of its kind to demonstrate the analysis of key quantitative indicators of CSR reporting in China. It aims at promoting qualitative disclosure on environmental and social performance, and improving the value of CSR reporting.

A Journey to Discover Values 2012-2013 shows a comparative analysis on CSR reporting of listed companies in China from 2011 to 2013. Findings suggest that listed companies have performed better on the key quantitative information disclosure year by year. However, the disclosure levels vary significantly among different industries. Listed companies of oil and gas, electricity and coal exploitation industries provide information of relatively better quality through their CSR reporting.The percentage of key quantitative disclosures of several industries has

declined mainly due to a poor level of disclosure of the added reports in 2012 and 2013. The study indicates a principle problem of CSR reporting in China: the quantity of CSR reporting increased greatly while the quality does not improve obviously. Also, the quantitative disclosure is still not standardized, for instance, the data disclosing is random, units of measurement are various, and data of different companies is hardly comparative.

Download the full report here (CN)