Print

Mail

wiki links

Top Chinese firms ranked

China's 100 largest publicly traded companies, led by China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, are all state-owned even after two decades of shifting to capitalism from communism, Fortune magazine said.

Fortune, which ranked China's top 100 firms by sales for the first time, compiled the list based on 1,088 Chinese companies traded on stock exchanges in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Hong Kong, London and New York.

They had a combined market value at the end of 2000 of US$581 billion, or 54 percent of China's gross domestic product, Fortune said.

The Chinese government sold about US$20 billion of shares in companies it owns to international investors in 2000 and about US$3 billion last year. It plans to sell more this year, including about 25 percent of Bank of China's Hong Kong unit.

One in five of the top 100 are in the steel, mining and refining industries, double the number of such companies in Fortune's Global 500 list of the world's biggest companies, the magazine said.

"China is somewhere between capitalism and communism," the magazine said in an issue that goes on sale from Monday. "No list of businesses in any other major economy would look remotely like this one."

No agricultural firms made it into the top 100 even though half a billion people earn a living off the land, and only four retailers compared with 51 on the Global 500, Fortune said.

The four Chinese retailers have combined sales of less than 1 percent of Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the biggest retailer.
This story has been viewed 1910 times.