A total of 23 Shenzhen firms including TCL, Huawei Technologies, China International Marine Containers (Group) Ltd. and ZTE Corp. are among this year's 500 leading manufacturers in China in terms of sales revenue.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which compiled the list for the first time, published the rankings Saturday. The list includes 64 Guangdong manufacturers, putting Guangdong among the five regions that have the most companies listed.

TV and home appliance maker TCL Group Co. Ltd., the top Shenzhen company on the list, ranks 11th with 51.68 billion yuan (US$6.46 billion) in sales revenue in 2005. Telecom equipment manufacturer Huawei ranks 13th.

Most of the Shenzhen companies on the top 500 list are high-tech manufacturers.

More than 75 percent of the top 500 are located in East China, with the highest number in Jiangsu Province.

Five of the top 10 manufacturing companies are in the steel sector and two are in the automobile sector. Legend Holdings Ltd. and Haier Group Corporation are two electronic companies on the top 10 list and both firms saw annual sales revenue top 100 billion yuan last year.

The other three companies with sales revenue of over 100 billion yuan last year are BaoSteel, China First Automobile Group and Dongfeng Motor.

Editor: Yan