BizChina

China's top 500 enterprises reported smaller revenue gaps with their U.S. counterparts, while outperforming their worldwide competitors in profitability amid the nation's rapid economic recovery, an industrial ranking report showed Saturday.

China's top 500 enterprises chalked up 4.05 trillion U.S. dollars in operating revenues last year, equivalent to about 18 percent of the operating revenue total created by the world's top 500 companies in the same year, and the ratio was 2.62 percentage points lower than the figure recorded for the year earlier, according to a report released Saturday in Hefei, capital of east China's Anhui Province, by the China Enterprise Confederation (CEC) and China Enterprise Directors Association.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said Thursday it would urge industrial enterprises to produce high-quality products as part of the effort to enhance the image of "made in China."

The Ministry would also draw up a blacklist displaying the names of those firms breaching quality-related regulations, said Li Yizhong, Minister of the MIIT.

The MIIT would reward those companies that have good records for producing quality products with increased policy and funding support, and punish those with poor quality-control records, said Li at a forum held in Beijing which focused on how to improve the quality and reputation of Chinese industrial products.

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Michael Wines has an excellent report in today’s New York Times, about the rising dominance of China’s state-owned enterprises, at the expense of the once-vibrant private sector. Although partly an unanticipated consequence of China’s big stimulus push, he notes, the trend may — to some degree — reflect a more profound shift in philosophy:

Once eager to learn from the United States, China’s leaders during the financial crisis have reaffirmed their faith in their own more statist approach to economic management, in which private capitalism plays only a supporting role.

“The socialist system’s advantages,” Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said in a March address, “enable us to make decisions efficiently, organize effectively and concentrate resources to accomplish large undertakings.”

The New York Times has an interesting article today on thriving state-owned companies in China-”China’s Policies Ensure State Enterprises Grow“.

The article makes no mention of China’s Internet industry, which will generate 6-7+ billion dollars in revenue this year from gaming, advertising and other sources, is growing 20% or more per year, and which has publicly listed companies with a combined market capitalization approaching 100 billion dollars (partial list here), and much more if you include the value of private firms like Alibaba Group and its Taobao subsidiary. A few billion dollars in annual revenue and 100 billion dollars or so in market capitalization still pales compared to China’s overall economy and to some of these state-owned behemoths. But as the Internet increasingly becomes embedded into hundreds of millions of people’s daily lives, its influence on Chinese society and China’s economy will be much greater than its current revenue would suggest.