China and the U.S. Run Neck-and-Neck in the Global 500
In the latest edition of the Fortune Global 500, American companies account for 121 of the world’s largest corporations by revenue. Chinese companies account for 129, including 10 Taiwanese companies. This marks the first time since the debut of the Global 500 in 1990 that a nation other the U.S. ranks first in terms of the number of entrants.
Granted, these numbers don’t tell the whole story. Combined, the 121 American companies account for 28.8% of the Global 500’s total revenues, while the more numerous Chinese companies total 25.6% of revenues.
“But that’s to be expected,” Fortune reported. “China is the rising power, economically smaller but growing much faster.”
The No. 1 nationality among the top 50 companies in this year’s Global 500 is American, with names like Walmart, Amazon, Apple and Berkshire Hathaway. For the bottom 50, it’s Chinese. “Those companies near the bottom are rising quickly, and like their country, they’re burning with ambition,” according to Fortune.
It bears mentioning that in narrowing the top 50 to the top 10, the U.S. and China have parity. Each is home to two of the 10: Walmart and Exxon Mobil in the case of the U.S., Sinopec Group and China National Petroleum in the latter.
The competition has more at stake than bragging rights. “As China seeks to succeed the U.S. as the preeminent superpower, business is playing an even larger role in international affairs than usual,” according to Fortune.
Although nations have always competed economically, here the U.S. and China are “engaged in direct battle over the world’s economic life force: technology,” according to Fortune. “As former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has written, ‘The battle is about whose economy will drive the technology of the future and set the standards for it.”
China’s President Xi Jinping knows which country he believes will be in the driver’s seat. By 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Communist revolution that swept Mao Zedong into power, Xi has predicted that China will be “fully developed, rich, and powerful.” That’s a goal that China expert Graham Allison of Harvard says includes being “unambiguously No. 1,” with a military “that can take on and defeat all adversaries.”
For comments, questions or concerns, please contact Paul Bubny
- ◦Economy
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