The China Ocean Shipping Company has released its Sustainable Development Report 2005, which is one of the first U.N. Global Compact reports issued by a state-owned enterprise in China.

Det Norske Veritas and the Global Compact Promotion Office of China Enterprise Confederation have jointly audited the COSCO report and believe that it is in compliance with the Global Reporting Initiative requirements. Wei Jiafu, president of COSCO, says the report shows that the company is improving its core competitiveness on the world stage.

Compiling the U.N. Global Compact reports is a new task for Chinese enterprises, because it relies on not only the finances and product quality of a firm, but also many strict requirements on human rights, corruption, environmental protection, labor, racism and energy consumption.

Wei Jiafu says that corporate social responsibility should not be a business public relations gimmick, but an indispensable component of enterprises in their development. Experts who participated in the audits point out that COSCO is the first enterprise in Asia that applied the VeriSustain approval standards of NDV in the audit of its sustainable development report.

However, the report also shows that there is deficiency in the collection of basic data and the management system of information. In responding to this, COSCO has decided to establish a special system for the data collection and info management for its sustainable development report in order to improve the overall level of the reports in the coming years.

Chen Jinhua, chairman of China Enterprise Confederation, says that China's government holds an active attitude for all the state-owned enterprises who join the U.N. Global Compact. He points out that developing enterprises should pay close attention to economic standards and other indexes such as culture, resources and environment.