Zhitong Finance App News. Recently, China Unicom (00762) released the “2023 Sustainable Development Report” to lead corporate responsibility practices with four substantive topics, ensure that responsibilities meet people's livelihood needs, and respond to stakeholders' concerns.

China Unicom was incorporated in Hong Kong on February 8, 2000. It has branches in 31 domestic provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) and many overseas countries and regions, and has a modern communication network covering the whole country and the world and a global customer service system. In 2023, China Unicom was selected as “Asia's Most Admired Telecom Company” by Institutional Investor (Institutional Investor) for eight consecutive years.

The ESG report shows that China Unicom is deeply implementing a strong technology enterprise, accelerating transformation into a world-class technology service enterprise with global competitiveness, and striving to become an important part of the country's strategic scientific and technological strength. In 2023, the group's R&D investment intensity exceeded 4%, overcoming core technologies in key fields such as IPv6 evolution and security, cybersecurity, smart vehicle road collaboration, and time-frequency synchronization chips. It has established 62 international standards, applied for 4,398 patents, won 1 Chinese Patent Silver Award, 2 World Internet Leading Scientific and Technological Achievement Awards, and the “5G Co-Construction and Shared SA Construction Project” won the National Quality Project Gold Award.

Build a green and low-carbon network and implement green and low-carbon operations

China Unicom continues to deepen joint construction and sharing, optimize the development layout of green data centers, and invest more than 300 million yuan in special funds for energy saving and carbon reduction transformation, forming leading network capabilities and promoting the high-quality, healthy and green development of digital information infrastructure.

Among them, China Unicom and China Telecom have joined hands to comprehensively deepen the co-construction and sharing of 5G, 4G, and basic network resources. The two sides have opened more than 1.21 million 5G intermediate frequency shared base stations, achieving continuous medium frequency coverage in townships and above and effective coverage in rural hot spots, achieving the effects of doubling the scale, doubling the coverage, and doubling the speed. By the end of the reporting period, joint construction and sharing had saved the country more than 340 billion yuan in investment, saved more than 39 billion yuan/year in operating costs, saved about 20 billion kilowatts/year of electricity, and reduced carbon emissions by about 11.5 million tons/year.

It is worth mentioning that China Unicom incorporates the concept of green development into production, operation and decision-making processes, actively promotes the development and application of green and low-carbon technology, improves the efficiency of comprehensive energy utilization, promotes green management throughout the product life cycle, strictly controls the source of equipment procurement, promotes the concept of green consumption and green living, and effectively enhances the level of digitalization, intelligence and greening of enterprise operations. In 2023, the group's water consumption was 14.92 million tons, a decrease of 10.28% compared with 2022. Greenhouse gas emissions were 13.25 million tons, a decrease of 1.12% compared to 2022.

Build a strong talent enterprise and promote social inclusion

China Unicom is actively implementing the strategy of strong talent, and is committed to building a standardized, orderly, fair and reasonable, mutually beneficial and win-win, harmonious and stable labor relationship, and creating a cultural atmosphere where the company cares about and cares for employees and loves the enterprise. In 2023, the total number of employees in the group was 242,891, the ratio of male to female employees was 1. 62:1, and science and innovation talents accounted for 40%.

The group has established a normalized talent education and training mechanism, and continues to carry out specialized competency training for key population groups. Among them, independent capacity development is carried out for various professionals. A training and certification system based on key business competencies was established, and 12 certification standards were formulated or updated throughout the year. In total, more than 164,000 people passed competency certification tests. In 2023, China Unicom invested 460 million yuan in training costs for employees, and each person participated in 115 hours of training.

In order to resolve the practical difficulties faced by employees, China Unicom's trade unions at all levels have established and dynamically managed difficult employee files in accordance with the requirements of “covering the bottom line, tightening the net, and building mechanisms” to create a “trinity” relief system for critical illness insurance, mutual aid funds, and supplementary medical treatment. The group funded more than 4,800 employees' children in 2023 and invested 120 million yuan to help needy workers.

Build a green supply chain and continuously improve the level of supply chain management

In terms of supply chain management, China Unicom promotes green management throughout the product life cycle, builds a green supply chain, creates a transparent and efficient supply chain management system, and promotes innovation in green and low-carbon technology upstream and downstream of the supply chain. The group optimizes supplier screening standards and adds ESG elements related to environmental and energy emissions such as ISO14001 and ISO50001. At the same time, a list of positive and negative actions is managed. Incentives are given to suppliers with excellent product evaluation and assessment results; measures such as banning entry, suspending cooperation, and ordering rectification are implemented for those that cause negative effects and economic losses in communication network construction, production and operation, quality service, corporate image, etc.

In addition, China Unicom has strengthened comprehensive strategic collaboration with strategic suppliers, connected with more than 200 suppliers, and achieved strategic cooperation such as supply chain collaboration, information promotion, and material investigation. In 2023, the group added 25,000 additional suppliers.

Facing 2024, China Unicom said it will adhere to a strong foundation, maintain integrity and innovation, integrate and open up, give full play to the company's unique advantages, thoroughly implement the strong enterprise strategy, solidly push forward key action plans, really work hard and forge ahead, and make new contributions to the Chinese-style modernization drive with the actual results of high-quality development.

(Link ESG researcher Deng Shixia)