Profits of China's top 500 enterprises has exceeded that of their United States counterparts for the first time, media in China reported, citing a survey.
Net profits of the Chinese companies are 170.6 billion USD in 2008, while the figure for the US companies in the same period are 98.9 billion USD, according to a report released by the China Enterprise Confederation CEC and China Enterprise Directors Association.
Although the net profits for the Chinese heavyweights were down 12.4 percent from a year ago, it is still less than a 84.67 percent fall for the US companies, which saw the worst decline in 55 years as recorded by the US Fortune magazine.
Wang Jiming, vice president of CEC, said although the business data showed that the Chinese companies were less vulnerable to the global financial crisis than the US counterparts, it did not mean they have made substantial improvements in comprehensive competitive power.
“Chinese enterprises enjoy relatively better policies and domestic market environment,” Wang was quoted China daily as saying.
But Chinese companies still lacked behind world's leading enterprises in resource allocation, innovation, international presence, business models and corporate culture, he added.
The threshold of this year's top 500 companies in China is raised to 10.54 billion yuan (1.55 billion USD) for sales revenue, compared with last year's 9.31 billion yuan, Xinhua said.
The CEC has compiled a list of China 's top 500 companies, similar to the Fortune 500, since 2002.
The company that topped the list was state-owned giant Sinopec, the largest oil refiner in Asia, with revenue of 1.5 trillion yuan (215 billion USD) in 2008. Sinopec also made it to the top 10 of the Fortune Global 500, coming in at number nine.
China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the nation's largest oil producer, came second with a turnover of 1.3 trillion yuan, and the State Grid Corporation of China ranked third with 1.1 trillion yuan in revenue.
The top 34 firms on the list are state-owned entities./.