On the 18th October 2009, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) held a press conference on “2009 China’s Corporate Social Responsibility Blue Book” and development of corporate social responsibility (CSR) of top 100 China’s corporations in Beijing, China. In the conference, they released the indexes and evaluation of China’s top 100 corporations’ Corporation Social Responsibility.

According to China’s Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2009, a set of comprehensive assessment system of the CSR development status and information disclosure system has been built to research on the indexes of China’s top 100 corporations by Research Center for Corporation Social Responsibility at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The assessment system is on the basis of four areas, the responsibility of management, marketing responsibility, social responsibility and environmental responsibility. The followings are their findings:

First and foremost, the overall level of China’s CSR is still in a low stage. Approximately one fifth of China’s top 100 corporations are in the start stage of CSR without sound idea and system. Roughly 40% of China’s top 100 corporations had little awareness of CSR as bystanders.

Secondly, in terms of the four-dimension model, the responsibility of management, market performance, social performance and environmental responsibility, the market responsibility scores the highest, due to corporation’s profit-driven model. Environmental responsibility scores the worst. Moreover, the responsibility of management is also very low. The huge gap between the communication effects of CSR of international corporations and some China central corporations, for example, actually suggests the gap of communication strategies, a significant part of management.

Third, natures of China’s corporations have huge impacts on CSR. China central state-owned corporations perform the best, followed by state-owned financial corporations, then private ones. China central state-owned corporations even did better than many foreign-invested corporations in China.

Fourthly, the bigger the scale of a corporation, the greater CSR index. The State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China National Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (CNOPC) rank the first three as CSR leaders. Furthermore, only two industries, power grid and electricity, are in the advanced stage, which might due to their long-term attention to the environment. Additionally, the textile industry has done very well in CSR beyond expectation, nevertheless, only Shandong Wei River Bridge Group is qualified in the top 100 CSR list.

Chen Jiagui, director of Economics department at CAS, pointed out that China’s CSR had been to a new era. The whole society, including the government, public, media, staff, consumers, non- governmental groups, community, investors and research institutions so forth, has been involved in the development of CSR. These different social sectors concern CSR from various prospective, which promotes China’s CSR to be a social movement. Especially in 2008, China has encountered several severe disasters and emergency events, such as flood in the north part, Wenchuan earthquake, Sanlu milk powder incident, as well as the financial crisis. Hence, CSR is even critical to China.

Furthermore, China’s CSR movement is accelerating. China’s corporations have shown increasing awareness of CSR and the focus of CSR has stepped from scholars’ discussions to corporations’ practice. As of September this year, over 500 corporations have announced the “Corporate Social Responsibility Report”, and many of them have established CSR departments.

In addition, some corporations have been positively exploring ways to make CSR as the business strategy and daily management to establish a comprehensive CSR management system.

(Compiled by Xin Li of Boston University, based on Chinese article http://news.hexun.com/2009-10-18/121379000.html. Edited by Wanxin Cheng of Harvard).