On September 11th, the latest list of China's top 500 enterprises was released, with 52 companies from Guangdong making the prestigious ranking. The combined revenue of these 500 companies surpassed 110 trillion yuan, representing a 1.58% increase compared to the previous year. Huawei led the list in R&D spending, investing 164.7 billion yuan in research and development.
Among the listed companies, 16 achieved revenues exceeding one trillion yuan, while 253 companies reported revenues of over 100 billion yuan, making up more than half of the list. The top five companies in terms of revenue are State Grid (3.864 trillion yuan), Sinopec (3.041 trillion yuan), China National Petroleum Corporation(2.985 trillion yuan), China State Construction (2.266 trillion yuan), and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (1.611 trillion yuan). Rounding out the top ten are China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, China Railway, Bank of China, and China Railway Construction.
In terms of regional distribution, Beijing leads with 78 companies, followed by Shandong (55), Guangdong (52), Zhejiang (51), Jiangsu (40), Shanghai (33), Hebei (25), Fujian (21), Sichuan (19), and Hubei (14), representing the top ten provinces with the most companies on the list.
R&D expenditure by these top 500 companies reached 1.81 trillion yuan, an increase of 235 billion yuan, or 14.89% year-on-year. Huawei, with its 164.7 billion yuan R&D expenditure, ranked first.
Corresponding with the surge in R&D investment, innovation output among these companies also improved. The total number of valid patents held by the China's top 500 enterprises reached 2.0297 million, an increase of 144,400 patents or 7.66% compared to the previous year. Of these, 889,600 were invention patents, marking a 19.67% increase. Invention patents now account for 43.83% of all patents, up 4.40 percentage points from last year, reflecting an improvement in patent quality.
Source: Lingnan on the Cloud
