Oil refining giant China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) is the mainland's biggest company, according to a new list of the Top 500 Chinese Enterprises.
Sinopec beat off competition from State Grid Corp of China and PetroChina to claim the top spot for the fourth year running as the mainland's top companies began to close the gap on their global counterparts.
The list, which ranks companies by operational revenue, showed mainland enterprises becoming more competitive against their global peers as net profits rose 19 times faster than those of the global 500.
'The mainland's expanding economy has helped these companies in spite of price increases for oil and other materials,' Xinhua quoted China Enterprise Confederation (CEC) deputy president Li Jianming as saying.
The total revenue of the top 500 mainland companies came in at US$2.99 trillion, 12.7 per cent of the global top 500, while profit grew from 6.5 per cent of the global total last year to 11.9 per cent this year.
Sinopec reported revenue of 1.23 trillion yuan (HK$1.41 trillion), compared with State Grid's 1.01 trillion yuan and PetroChina's 1 trillion yuan.