By Liu Junhong

Fortune magazine of the US recently published its list of the 500 biggest companies in the world in terms of market value. The latest Fortune 500 reflected three prominent changes in the political and economic structure of our world, namely the so-called natural resources nationalism, the crackling of the US-led global financial system and the rise of emerging economies.

Natural resource-rich nations in Central and South America such as Venezuela and Colombia have taken to nationalizing oil and natural gas resources since the war in Iraq while Russia, Iran and Northern Africa bought back energy resources stakes. To date at least 70 percent of oil and natural gas producers have been nationalized, signifying "natural resource nationalism" is becoming a global trend.

Thus oil, natural gas and minerals have turned from "market resources" to "strategic resources" and, prompting oil capital around the world and cross-national corporations to plunge into a global merger frenzy. "Natural resource nationalism", while driving oil price sky high, has elevated a number of natural-resource-oriented enterprises and energy-resource monopolies into the ranks of world market flagships.

For example, six of the top 10 Fortune 500 corporations are energy monopolies driven by cross-national oil capital. And Exxon-Mobile has been on top of the world in terms of profit for years. Meanwhile, as emerging economies, China, Russia, India and Brazil found their own companies that had made the Top 500 more or less share the characteristics.

Faced with soaring oil price and shrinking energy resources, it has become one of the most pressing issues in international politics to deal with the problem of global warming. In early 2007, the United Nations Security Council for the first time included in its agenda the issue of addressing climate change, indicating climate issues have become "matters of international security"; at the end of that year, the signatories of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change met at the Indonesian resort of Bali and hammered out a road map for the implementation of the "post-Kyoto Protocol", making 2007 the beginning of "the climate era"; and starting this year developed countries such as Japan and those in Europe are obliged to honor their commitments to greenhouse gas reduction as the humankind enters the "low-carbon (emission) era".

Thus energy security and environmental protection became the two wheels of one chariot while energy-saving and emission-reducing technology became a hot ticket on the international market. Automobile giants that put the first "hybrid cars" on the market, steel and power-producing monopolies with advanced environmental protection technology and cross-national enterprises in leading position on alternative energy sources are now among the most successful businesses in the world.