Centrally-administered State-owned enterprises (SOEs), the backbone of China's national economy, have been urged to play a leading role in fulfilling social responsibilities and securing sustainable development.

Though not compulsory, some of the country's 152 SOEs directly under the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) will start this year to release regular reports for stake holders to evaluate their fulfillment of social duties.

SASAC, the watchdog of State-owned assets, has written the move into its first directive of the year, which defines social responsibility in a broad sense to cover environmental protection, energy and resources conservation, securing production safety, protecting the rights of employees and consumers, maintaining market order, upholding business ethics and philanthropy, repaying investors and creating job opportunities.

But the directive did not detail the frequency of the releases or how many SOEs would release regular reports this year.

Corporate Social Responsibility has evolved into a catchphrase in the global business community after the United Nations initiated the Global Compact in 2000, emphasizing the role of business in the areas of human rights, labor, the environment and anti-corruption.

Eleven centrally-administered SOEs including Baosteel, China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company and China Aluminum, have voluntarily joined multinationals to release reports on social responsibility and sustainable development.

Sources with the SASAC noted that the growing consciousness of social responsibility within China coincided with global trends and had profound political connotations.

China's centrally-administered SOEs, though still limited in strength and core competitiveness when compared with multinationals and first-class international companies, were the backbone of China's State-owned economy and an ultimate embodiment of government ownership for the public good, they say.

After nearly three decades of economic reforms and opening-up, the Chinese economy has turned from a monolithic State and collective-owned economy into a variety of ownerships with the State-owned enterprises at the core.

Private firms have experienced a rapid takeoff but remain in the fledging stage, hiring 69.3 million employees by last July, up 518 percent on the previous year, and possessing a combined registered capital of 8.3 trillion yuan ($1.1 trillion).