Altogether ten state-owned enterprises of China were recently listed among world top 500 companies published by Fortune, engaging in fields from telecommunication to banking. They are: State Power Corporation of China (60 Place), China National Petroleum Corporation (81), China Petrochemical Corporation (86), China Telecom (214), Bank of China (277), China Mobile (287), China National Chemical Import & Export Corporation (311), China Construction Bank (389), China National Cereals, Oils & Foodstuffs Import& Export Corp (392), Agricultural Bank of China (471).

The US-based retailing giant WalMart leapt to the first place with an unprecedented sales income of 220 billion US dollars last year, being the ever world top enterprise from service trades.

There were only three Chinese enterprises among Fortune's first ever list in 1995. In recent years with China's deepening economic reforms more enterprises entered the list. However, Fortune pointed out that still China only took up 2 percent of the world 500, and all of them turned out to be overstaffed state-owned ones. For example, the China Petrochemical Corporation, ranked 86, reported a yearly income of 40 billion US dollars. While the US based Exxon Petroleum Company created an annual income as high as 192 billion US dollars with its 979,000 staff.

Affected by global economic slowdown and terrorism, 297 enterprises of the world 500 reported losses, with a total annual income less than half that of 2000. This was also the biggest shrink of global wealth in eight years, which betrayed two characteristics. The first, the telecom trades suffered most, with 24 companies lost a total sum of 78 billion US dollars, including UK's Vodafone, Canada's Nortelnetworks and Japan's NTT Group. The second is traditional industries regained strength. Chemical enterprise DuPont, daily necessities producer Unilever and chain retailer WalMart all registered climbing profits. In Asia, Japan's Mitsubishi Motors Corporation gave away its first place to Toyota. Among the top 10 of the 500, US enterprises occupied 6 places, European companies 3 and only one Japanese firm.

(People’s Daily July 12, 2002)