Reports seek to improve Chinese brands global recognition

A conference held during China Brand Day at the Shanghai Expo Center saw research reports released concerning the improvement of Chinese brands' global promotion, accelerating the establishment of an ESG (environmental, social, and governance) evaluation system in line with international standards.

The conference on overseas communication of Chinese Brands and ESG Sustainability, initiated by Xinhua News Agency, as the official conference of China Brand Day 2024, invited authoritative organizations, experts, and representatives from enterprises, including China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) and Westwell Technology.

"This year marks the 20th anniversary of the ESG concept put forward by the UN Global Compact. I am pleased to see China's deepening engagement in sustainability and ESG practices, including China's 'dual carbon' goals and policy support for ESG disclosure and reporting," said Sanda Ojiambo, assistant secretary-general of the United Nations.

The 2024 China Brand Global Communication Research Report was released at the conference by China Economic Information Service (CEIS) and PR Newswire.

It shows there's a rising number of Chinese brands in the fields of healthcare and new-energy vehicles (NEV) going overseas, as the ESG concept has become an important part of Chinese brands' international communication.

In addition, online communication is the preferred way for Chinese brands to communicate globally. Among them, Facebook is still the most used overseas social media platform for Chinese brands for communication, while the proportion of brands choosing to use Linkedln is also gradually increasing.

According to the report, lack of local knowledge is still the main challenge for Chinese brands to communicate overseas, including unfamiliarity towards the target market environment, user habits, local culture and language, making it difficult to follow the global new trends of brand communication.

In response to the findings, the report concludes with the recommendation that Chinese brands should strengthen direct or indirect cooperation with overseas media, explore more opportunities for overseas media publication, exclusive interviews and in-depth reports, and keep making long-term efforts.

The conference also saw the release of the "Research Report on ESG Development of Chinese Enterprises" by CEIS and the Institute of Finance and Sustainability (IFS).

The study found that the disclosure rate of ESG indicators has grown very fast in the past two years.

In China, under the guidance of the ESG policy, the comprehensiveness, completeness, and details of corporate disclosure are constantly being improved.

However, gaps still exist in the disclosure of different industries, as well as an imbalance in disclosure indicators.

For example, compared to the high ESG disclosure rate of the steel, petroleum and petrochemical industries, that of the commerce, retail and media industries is relatively low.

In addition, the disclosure rate of indicators such as customer complaint rate and employee turnover rate is also relatively low, which cannot reflect the real situation of listed companies and some potential risks well.

"The government should accelerate the mutual recognition and docking with international ESG disclosure standards, to improve the ESG disclosure capacity building mechanism. For enterprises, they should pay more attention to ESG issues," said Sa Shuang, chief analyst of credit risk at China Economic Information Service.

According to official data, 2,115 domestic companies, or 39.7 percent, have individually compiled and released their 2023 sustainability reports, up 300 companies year on year from the first half of last year.