China: CSR and stock exchanges

The CSR Asia weekly newsletter is a handy resource if you are in Asia or if you are interested in following developments there. I was power-scanning yesterday's issue and suddenly hit upon a a passing reference to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) and CSR. This got my attention and I dug a little deeper.

My search led me to CSR Asia Weekly Vol.2 Week 24 (2006) where author Brian Ho described a document issued by SZSE - the smaller of China's two exchanges with 540 companies listed - entitled "Instructions for Listed Companies on Social Responsibility (Draft for Comments)". Wow.

Further searches were hindered by my lack of language skills so I am not sure if this document has moved from Draft to Final, and if it has been implemented by SZSE, but Ho summarized its major parts. The Instructions broadly cover rights of shareholders and creditors, rights of employees, rights of suppliers, clients, and customers, protection of environment and community, and finally in part 6 - "transparency of information and establishment of a mechanism."

Part 6 apparently instructs companies to report on their CSR performance periodically and online, and that the CSR report should describe the company's actual CSR performance versus the benchmark in the Instructions, the reasons targets might have been missed, and a timetable for implementation.

Are these the foundations for GRI reporting in China?