The latest list of the largest 500 firms in the world has been released by Fortune, and Chinese firms seem to be on top of it.  China has left behind the US, its main competitor, and trade war rival. This has been an unprecedented development in the long history of the Fortune 500 listings since its debut in the 90s. The US has always held the top spot when it comes to the most number of companies in the global list of the largest companies by the size of their revenues.

Along with the economic rise of China came increasingly large revenues for the large firms based in China.

Chinese firms were able to grab a total of 129 spots in a listing of 500, securing the top position for China for the country with the most number of fortune 500 firms. The US was a close 2nd with its 121 US-based large firms out of the top 500 globally.

Last year’s listing saw 120 of the Chinese firms make it into the list of the top 500 globally while the US held the top spot with 126 of its firms making it to the esteemed list.

Since then, however, the number of US-based firms in the top 500 declined by 5 to 121 this year. On the other hand, Mainland China and Hong Kong fared better this year as compared to last year as more firms made it to the list of the top 500 highest revenue-generating firms globally.

This is a momentous turn in the history of world affairs as this proves to be yet another conspicuous sign of the imminent power shift from the west to the east.

As for China, state-owned firms continue to play a dominant role in its economy. Of all the Chinese companies that made it on the fortune 500 list, 80.2% were state-owned enterprises (SOE).

This number stood at 76.3% last year. There has been an improvement ever since then as three state-owned firms made it to the top five global firms. These include China National Petroleum, Sinopec Group, and the State Grid.

The private sector has also picked up pace over the past decade, and there are some homegrown unicorns such as Alibaba, Baidu, etc. that have made it to the Fortune 500 listings this year.

Private firms such as Huawei have made substantial gains over the last year despite all the trade tensions and blacklisting. It was able to move up the global rankings from the 72nd spot to the 61st.

All in all, the China-based firms generally outperformed most others in terms of revenue generation and dominated the global list by Fortune.