ZTE Corporation, one of the nation's leading telecom equipment makers, has been crowned the best corporate governance performer last year among China's top 100 listed companies, according to a corporate governance rating report released yesterday.

The corporate governance assessment report rated the corporate governance performance of FORTUNE China China's designated top 100 listed companies valued by their revenue.

China Merchants Bank, a Shenzhen-based commercial bank, was ranked second in the report, which was jointly conducted by the Chinese Center for Corporate Governance at the Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS) and City University of Hong Kong's Faculty of Business.

Another Shanghai-floated bank, Hua Xia Bank Co Ltd was ranked third.

The report, sponsored by global risk consulting firm Protiviti, said compared to last year, the overall corporate governance standard of the top 100 Chinese listed companies has improved, but only by a small margin.

The rise in the corporate governance standard, the assessment report says, is largely "thanks to the improvements made in areas such as better compliance with increased requirements on information disclosure and transparency."

Indicators such as information disclosure and transparency, shareholders' rights and the equal treatment of shareholders are used to assess and then evaluate the corporate governance performance.

China's top 100 public companies are doing the best in areas such as information disclosure and transparency, the report found.

"This is mainly due to the strict disclosure requirement set by regulators," explained Professor Lu Tong, author of the report.

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