China’s top 500 companies outperformed their US counterparts for the first time last year, a survey conducted by a business group has revealed, as the financial crisis wreaked havoc in the US.
Net profits at the nation’s highest-performing firms totaled US$171 billion last year, compared with US$99 billion for the US firms, according to the survey by the China Enterprise Confederation (CEC, 中國企業聯合會).
The business group has compiled a list of China’s top 500 companies, similar to the Fortune 500, since 2002.
The Chinese firms saw their profits fall by 13.2 percent last year compared with the previous year, according to the survey posted on the CEC’s Web site — still a better performance than the Fortune 500’s 85 percent drop in profits.
The company that topped the list was state-owned giant Sinopec (中石化), the largest oil refiner in Asia, with revenue of 1.5 trillion yuan (US$215 billion) last year, according to the survey, which was posted on the weekend.
Sinopec also made it to the top 10 of the Fortune Global 500, coming in at No. 9.
China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC, 中國石油天然氣), the nation’s largest oil producer, came second with turnover of 1.3 trillion yuan, and the State Grid Corporation of China (國家電網) followed with 1.1 trillion yuan in revenue.
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (中國工商銀行), the country’s biggest lender, ranked fourth on the list with turnover of 490 billion yuan.
The top 34 firms on the list are state-owned entities.
Wang Jiming (王基銘), CEC’s vice president said the performance of China’s top 500 last year showed that the financial crisis had less of an impact on the Asian nation’s firms than on their US and global counterparts.
But he added that this did not signal any substantial improvement in overall competitiveness.
“Chinese enterprises enjoy a good policy and domestic market environment,” he was quoted as saying on the Web site.
“But compared to big global companies, they ... still lag behind in resource allocation, innovation, international presence, business models and corporate culture.”
The nation’s top companies also did well on the world stage, eclipsing Britain for the first time in terms of the number of firms in the Fortune Global 500, Wang said.
According to the 2009 global list, 37 Chinese companies qualified — a jump of eight firms compared with the previous ranking. But only 26 British firms made it to the list.
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