The 2024 China ESG Investment Development Innovation White Paper is released.

Securities Times' Bond Community News reported that recently, China Asset Management Co., Ltd. and the Social Value Investment Union (Shenzhen) released the "2024 China ESG Investment Development Innovation White Paper" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper"). The White Paper explores the current status and characteristics of ESG investment from policy to market, from concept to practice, from global frontier to Chinese dynamics. Specifically, the White Paper summarizes ten observations, including the effective implementation of global sustainable disclosure standards, the active promotion of localization in multiple countries, the recovery of the international sustainable fund market, the slowdown in the issuance of domestic ESG theme funds, the disclosure rate of A-share companies' ESG reports exceeding 40%, and the further optimization of ESG practices.

Based on the above macro trend observations, the White Paper also provides detailed data analysis based on micro observations. First, the three exchanges' Sustainable Development Report Guidelines released this year require some listed companies to disclose their 2025 Sustainable Development Report by 2026 at the latest. The White Paper preliminarily estimates that the number of domestic listed companies required to disclose in 2026 is about 457. Second, as of the end of September 2024, a total of 296 ESG theme funds have been established in the domestic market, with a total size of RMB223.541 billion, up 14.8% from the end of the second quarter, ending the downward trend since the third quarter of 2023.

As of the end of September 2024, 2220 A-share listed companies in China have released their ESG reports for the previous year, accounting for over 40%, up 7 percentage points from the previous year. In addition, about 57% of the companies in the CSI 300 Index have verified and disclosed their greenhouse gas emissions in Scope 1 and 2 in 2023, up 6 percentage points from the previous year, and almost all companies have taken climate action initiatives. The issue of biodiversity protection is also increasingly valued, with 60.7% of CSI 300 companies taking biodiversity protection measures, up from 100% in 2021.

The White Paper points out that with the implementation of international common standards for sustainable disclosure and domestic regulatory details, the significant improvement of ESG data quality and accessibility, and the deepening of ESG financial material research and disclosure, the transition from the "labeling" ESG investment 1.0 era to the ESG investment 2.0 era that is closely integrated with fundamental analysis has been made. The ESG investment 2.0 era will also provide a broader path for the local innovation practice of sustainable investment, and the principles of industry neutrality, marketization, and substance over form have effectively responded to the various accusations of ESG opponents against ESG investment.