China Unicom

China Unicom contributes to universal digital access by discounting its services for low-income households and people with disabilities.

China Unicom supports government programmes to provide smartphone skills training in rural areas, with over 300,000 participants in 2020.

No evidence was found of leading practices in this area.

The company demonstrates its commitment to open innovation through its membership in standards organisations. It also supports open source projects and collaborates with universities.

Although China Unicom has programmes that support digital affordability, it could provide more details such as its contribution and the number of beneficiaries. The company also has an opportunity to support digital opportunities for women and girls. It could expand its reporting of accessibility initiatives as well as how many people with disabilities it employs. In addition, China Unicom should report how the economic value it generates is distributed among its stakeholders.

The company has an opportunity to develop programmes for training intermediate and technical digital skills, and for sustained efforts to help school connectivity.

The company should demonstrate how it assigns oversight and accountability for cybersecurity; monitors, reports and rectifies security incidents; and mitigates digital risks for children.

The company has an opportunity to demonstrate how it supports technology innovation ecosystems. It can also show how it collaborates on big data for sustainable development and applies ethical considerations in research and development activities.

China Unicom does not have a public commitment to respecting human rights or the ILO core labour rights. Furthermore, the company does not disclose a process to identify, assess, and take action on salient human rights risks its own operations and business relationships. While the company provides a grievance mechanism for workers to raise human rights concerns and complaints, it does not provide a grievance mechanism accessible to external stakeholders. Moreover, the company does not engage with stakeholders whose human rights have been potentially or actually impacted by its operations.

China Unicom discloses that 100% of its contracted employees are covered by collective bargaining agreements, but does not provide any relevant information in reference to other labour fundamentals such as living wages, working hours or health and safety. For example, the company does not publicly commit to respecting the health and safety of workers, and is not explicit in stating that it does not require workers to work more than regular and overtime hours. In relation to workforce diversity, while the company provides a breakdown of employees in different employee categories by gender, it does not disclose against any other indicators of diversity per employee category.

China Unicom has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, but does not include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with business relationships. In relation to tax, while the company disclose income tax payments for some of its tax jurisdictions, including Hong Kong and Mainland China, it does not disclose income tax payments for its individual tax jurisdictions. Furthermore, the company does not disclose a global tax strategy. Finally, the company lacks disclosure on lobbying and political engagement.

The below datasheet disaggregates scores within the three core social measurement areas and by specific indicators.