Employees work at the production line inside the Chery Jaguar Land Rover plant before the plant's opening ceremony in Changshu, Jiangsu Province. (Photo : REUTERS)
Transparency International released a survey indicating that Chinese companies are performing poorly.
The Berlin-based civil society organization revealed that these firms are not transparent. The survey was conducted among 100 companies in the world.
Mainland Chinese corporations occupied the bottom 25 of the list and three of them scored zero out of 10.
The three mainland companies that scored zero were car maker Chery, appliance maker Galanz and car parts maker Wanxiang Group.
These enterprises did not practice any form of transparency, and can be assumed as most corrupt.
Only ZTE, a telecommunications company, reached the top 25.
Rampant corruption among businesses reflect the high level of corruption in their environment. This was the analysis of Susan Cote-Freeman, head of business integrity of Transparency International.
She said, "All these companies, including the Chinese ones, are expanding in other geographies and they really have to raise the bar on their anti-corruption and disclosure practices if we're going to have a level playing field and if we're going to really tackle this problem of corruption."
However, Chi Lo, China senior economist at BNP Paribas claim that despite the vigorous efforts of the Chinese government to fight corruption, growth has been slow. The GDP went down by 1.5 percent in the past two years.
Foreign companies were also affected by the anti-corruption drive. Pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Smith Kline paid $500 million in fines last year. This was due to allegations of bribery committed by GSK's Chinese subsidiary.
In the international arena, Indian companies still rank the highest in terms of transparency. This is because India has very strict government regulations on financial reporting.
Indian telecommunications company Bharti Airtel holds the top spot in the survey.
