Foreign companies accounted for more than half of
China's foreign
trade, taking almost three in every five dollars in imports and
exports last year.
The 2005 Top 200 list of China's importers and exporters listed
148 foreign companies, up 50 percent from 2001, while four
privately-owned Chinese companies also elbowed their way on to the
list.
"Compared with state-owned and collectively-owned firms, foreign
and privately-owned companies showed greater growth potential in
terms of imports and exports after China became a World Trade
Organization (WTO) member," said Zhang Lichuan, director of the
China Customs Statistics Department.
United States telecommunications giant Motorola was the top
foreign-owned exporter in fourth place with exports worth US$6.45
billion, while Republic of Korea telecommunications and electronics
giant Samsung was the top foreign-owned importer, bringing in goods
worth US$4.32 billion and ranking ninth overall.
The list showed 39 state-owned, nine collectively-owned and four
privately-owned companies gained the biggest share of export value,
while 130 foreign, 60 state-owned, six collectively-owned and four
privately-owned companies gained the biggest share of import
value.
The nature of China's foreign trade and its economy was
reflected in the rankings: top importer was the China Petroleum and
Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) with imports valued at US$24.72
billion.
Chinese oil firms Petrochina, China Petrochemical International
Business Corp. and Sinochem ranked fourth, fifth and sixth
respectively in imports.
In 2005, foreign companies reaped US$831.7 billion from imports
and exports, 58.5 percent of the country's total, up 7.7 percentage
points over 2001.
Privately-owned companies raked in US$167.4 billion of the
import and export value in 2005, 18.2 times more than 2001, from
1.7 percent of the total import and export value in 2001 to 11.8
percent in 2005 with an annual increase of 109.4 percent.
Privately-owned companies contributed 17.4 percent of the
country's trade.
Zhang said self-employed business people would likely feature
prominently on future lists since being allowed to engage in
foreign trade in July 2004. Imports and exports by self-employed
businesspeople jumped to 140 million dollars in 2005 from US$4.2
million in 2004.
(Xinhua News Agency June 25, 2006)