Although CSR has been the subject of substantial academic research for more than half a\ud
century, the CSR literature is dominated by empirical studies in the industrialized countries.\ud
There is limited knowledge on how CSR is perceived and implemented by companies in\ud
developing countries. This research is trying to answer those questions: what has been\ud
reported in China? Which stakeholder groups are the most important stakeholder groups in\ud
China? What is the content of CSR reports in China? And what factors are associated with\ud
CSR reporting in China, in terms of culture, political and legal system, ownership, size and\ud
industry? Based on a content analysis approach, this paper aims to identify the determinants\ud
of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in China using stand-alone reports of the\ud
top 500 Chinese companies from 2006 to 2010. It is found that CSR reporting is positively associated with various factors. In addition, companies in environmental sensitive industries\ud
tend to report more environmental responsibility information than others. State-Owned\ud
Enterprises are not doing better than other types of companies. Laws, regulations or\ud
guidelines have little impacts on the reporting in China. Also the government is not one of\ud
the most important stakeholders in China. The research results support the stakeholder\ud
theory in an emerging market with important and relevant insights for enterprise managers\ud
interested in exploiting the reports as a tool to communicate with their stakeholders