ESG Information Disclosure Research Of China’s Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Industry

ESG stands for Environmental,Social and Governance.Unlike the traditional financial and business performance evaluation,ESG rating focuses on the environmental,social and governance performance of enterprises,and evaluates the contributions made by enterprises in promoting sustainable economic development and fulfilling social responsibilities.Although ESG-related research started late in China,the social attention and recognition of ESG is increasing.The comparison reveals that the industry characteristics of pharmaceutical manufacturing industry are consistent with three fundamental concepts of ESG.First,from the environmental perspective,the pharmaceutical industry is one of the 16 heavily polluting industries listed in the Guide to Environmental Information Disclosure for Listed Companies and deserves environmental information disclosure.From the perspective of social responsibility,pharmaceutical manufacturing industry is closely related to people’s health due to the special nature of the industry,and pharmaceutical companies need to actively undertake corresponding social responsibility.From the perspective of corporate governance,pharmaceutical enterprises are susceptible to macroeconomic regulation by the government and have high investment,high risk,high return and high technical requirements,which make the development of pharmaceutical manufacturing industry restricted to a certain extent,thus,the ability of corporate governance is crucial to the development and progress of enterprises.Relying on the theories of sustainable development,stakeholders,information asymmetry and triple bottom line,this paper uses literature research method,statistical analysis method and case study method to analyze the industry size and financial status of China’s A-share listed pharmaceutical manufacturing companies,and the overall situation of ESG information disclosure.Based on the reference of international and domestic ESG disclosure framework,a new ESG information disclosure system for pharmaceutical manufacturing industry is proposed with the characteristics of the industry,and the 72 companies that made disclosures within the pharmaceutical industry are scored and analyzed for their ESG disclosures by market capitalization scale using the scoring index.According to the comparison among enterprises and among disclosure indexes,it is found that the disclosure rate of ESG information disclosure in China’s pharmaceutical manufacturing industry is low,the number of disclosing companies is small,the content integrity is poor,third-party auditing is not conducted,the disclosure method is not uniform and the disclosure time lags behind.Subsequently,Fosun Pharmaceuticals,a comprehensive ESG information disclosure company,was selected as the case study object,and its ESG disclosure in the past three years was compared with its longitudinal score.Finally,we propose suggestions in four aspects: optimizing the general ESG disclosure environment,constructing an information disclosure system,improving disclosure awareness,and rationalizing the use of big data platform,in order to provide reference for other listed companies in the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry in ESG management and report preparation,so as to improve the level of ESG disclosure in the whole industry.