CAPCO and CSI Jointly Released China Listed Companies ESG Development Report (2025)

On November 18, the China Association for Public Companies (CAPCO) and China Securities Index Co., Ltd. (CSI) jointly released the China Listed Companies ESG Development Report (2025) (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") at the 2025 Listed Companies Sustainable Development Conference. This marks the fifth consecutive year the two organizations have released this report, providing insight into the ESG development of Chinese listed companies.

The year 2025 is a pivotal year connecting the past and future in advancing Chinese modernization. It is also a crucial year concluding the "14th Five-Year Plan" and planning for the next five-year period. In the process of practicing sustainable development concepts, Chinese listed companies are committed to promoting technological innovation, accelerating the green transition, and fostering common prosperity. They increasingly recognize that environment, social, and governance improvements are not merely responses to regulatory requirements but strategic pivots for building long-term corporate resilience and cultivating core competitiveness. The Report summarizes and analyzes new developments in ESG evolution throughout 2025.

The Report indicates that China's ESG ecosystem is maturing, with a continuously improving regulatory framework. Firstly, China's green transition model demonstrates leadership and responsibility in global sustainable development. While achieving landmark progress in non-fossil energy development and maintaining an absolute global advantage in renewable energy installed capacity, China took the lead in responding to the global governance framework in the field of biodiversity conservation and launched major biodiversity protection projects. Secondly, policy guidance and standard construction in China's sustainable field are becoming increasingly refined. The Energy Law of the People's Republic of China, which officially took effect in January 2025, and the debut of the Ecological Environment Code (Draft) in April, significantly propel the legalization process of China's green and low-carbon development. Multiple departments are collaborating to build a full-chain supervision system for sustainable development. The practicality of financial empowerment policies and measures has noticeably strengthened, and the sustainable information disclosure framework is gradually being perfected. The Sustainable Development Report Guidelines and subsequently released supporting preparation guides provide precise guidance for enterprises implementing sustainable information disclosure. As of September 2025, over 2,500 A-share listed companies had published 2024 reports related to sustainable development, representing a 5% year-on-year increase in the disclosure rate. Thirdly, sustainable investment is precisely empowering green transition practices, shifting from "scale orientation" to "value leadership". Guided and regulated by sustainable development concepts and green finance policies, China's sustainable investment market is moving away from the traditional "competition in scale". By curbing "greenwashing" projects from financing, the market is transitioning towards value creation. As of the end of June 2025, the total scale of domestic ESG public fund products reached 268.291 billion yuan. The green transition investment product system iterated and upgraded, achieving a breakthrough from "single supply" to "diversified suitability".

According to the Report, ESG practices among Chinese enterprises are steadily developing in both breadth and depth, moving from "compliance disclosure" to "proactive planning". In terms of the environment, companies are resolutely implementing the transformation towards dual control of carbon emission intensity and total emission amount, extending carbon reduction actions throughout the entire industrial chain. Circular economy models and biodiversity conservation measures are being substantively applied in more industries. In the 2024 reporting period, over 70% of companies disclosed carbon reduction measures, and 38% disclosed biodiversity or land resource protection measures. Total corporate greenhouse gas emissions and emission intensity decreased by 11% and 12% year-on-year, respectively. Socially, companies are anchoring their responsibilities deeply within the value chain, optimizing stakeholder relationships, leveraging accumulated strengths to serve national strategies, and promoting the symbiotic prosperity of corporate development and public well-being, while empowering value upgrades through technological innovation. In the 2024 reporting period, over 27% of companies achieved 100% employee training coverage, 75% of companies focused on resilient supply chain management, listed companies invested an average of 36.82 million yuan in rural revitalization projects, and both technology-intensive and traditional industries strengthened data security protection measures. In terms of governance, listed companies are focusing on governance restructuring, benchmarking against the new Company Law to advance the development of modern enterprises with Chinese characteristics. In the 2024 reporting period, over 70% of companies established board or specific committee oversight functions for sustainable development work, more than 40% incorporated ESG factors into risk management and internal control systems, the number of corporate governance incidents decreased significantly, and employee stock ownership and equity incentive mechanisms were more widely adopted.

In promoting ESG practices among listed companies, the Report proposes measures in six areas: First, strengthening the implementation of sustainable policies to solidify the foundation for corporate practice. Second, building internal driving mechanisms for sustainable practices to enhance corporate capabilities. Third, leveraging the guiding role of sustainable markets to activate the potential for sustainable development in enterprises. Fourth, strengthening the function of local ESG ratings to synergistically advance "improvement through evaluation". Fifth, accelerating digital and intelligent integration to focus on enhancing the effectiveness of corporate sustainable governance. Sixth, promoting the international alignment of ESG standards, leveraging high-level opening up to empower sustainable development.

As a joint venture of the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges, CSI has consistently supported the capital market in serving the green and low-carbon transition, advancing the construction of the ESG ecosystem with the goal of "establishing China's ESG evaluation standards and promoting the best Chinese practices in ESG." Firstly, based on national policies and local realities, it deeply integrates the sustainable information disclosure requirements of the exchanges to create a CSI ESG evaluation methodology that aligns with the characteristics of Chinese companies, and launches core products based on CSI ESG evaluation. Currently, the CSI Listed Company ESG Evaluation and CSI Climate Transition Evaluation cover nearly 5,000 A-share listed companies; the CSI Bond Issuer ESG Evaluation covers over 2,500 bond issuers; and the CSI ESG Fund Data Service covers approximately 4,300 public fund products. Secondly, it expands the application of ESG evaluation products and enriches the supply of ESG indices. On one hand, the CSI ESG evaluation results are incorporated into the compilation of specialized broad-based indices. In the construction of broad-based indices such as the CSI "A-Series" indices, the SSE 180, and the SSE 380, the CSI ESG evaluation is used as a screening criteria in sustainable investment. It strengthens constituent risk management and promotes innovative development in domestic index investing. On the other hand, CSI continues to enrich the sustainable development index system, including ESG benchmarks, ESG leaders, ESG strategies, and ESG themes, providing abundant targets for sustainable investment. As of the end of October this year, CSI had cumulatively published 164 ESG and sustainability indices, with 90 index-tracking products totaling 96.297 billion yuan in scale; there were 177 broad-based index products that applied CSI ESG screening, such as those based on the CSI "A-Series" indices, totaling 278.268 billion yuan in scale. Meanwhile, CSI ESG evaluation products are also widely used in the investment research processes of over a hundred institutions, including pensions, public funds, and insurance companies. Thirdly, it promotes ESG standard-setting and its global influence. On one hand, it completed research projects on the standardization of corporate ESG evaluation for the National Financial Standardization Technical Committee and the Securities Sub-Technical Committee of the National Financial Standardization Technical Committee, promoting green finance standard-setting; on the other hand, it promotes and cultivates the concept of ESG through channels such as the China Listed Companies ESG Development Report, communicating the ESG stories of Chinese companies. In the future, CSI will develop new products such as CSI Green Revenue Data, expand the application of ESG evaluation and ESG index products, enhance the influence of local ESG ratings, and stimulate "improvement through evaluation".

The China Listed Companies ESG Development Report is an important annual overview completed by CSI and the CAPCO. Standing at the new starting point of the next five-year plan, CSI will continue to cooperate with the CAPCO and relevant parties to jointly build China's ESG ecosystem, collectively promote the green and low-carbon transition, help more companies transition from "bystanders" to "participants", and from "participants" to "leaders", further enhancing the sustainable competitiveness of Chinese listed companies.