Alibaba Photo:VCG

China's number in Top 500 companies falls from 51 to 47, according to Hurun Global 500 Report 2021 released on Friday. 

Those companies, led by Tencent worth $697 billion and Alibaba, represented a total value of $5.5 trillion, more than the combined total of companies from third- and fourth-placed Japan and UK. But Alibaba's value was down 18 percent to 3.8 trillion yuan ($584 billion) and dropped 2 places to 9th globally following China's tougher regulations on platform economy, the report said. 

China has 10 newly-listed companies, led by Chinese video-sharing platform Kuaishou, which shot straight into a Top 200 place. And 10 companies broke into Top 100, led by video sharing platform ByteDance, up 78 places to 30th with $280 billion and China battery producer CATL, up 89 places to 50th with $204 billion.

The ongoing US-China trade war has spilled over into an acceleration of a decoupling of the economies, fuelling competition for high-tech sectors such as semiconductors. The global shortage of chips, which are now required in everything from smartphones to cars, has sparked competition in their design and production. 

"Interestingly, 80 percent of the world's most successful start-ups, unicorns valued at over $1 billion, are from the US and China, suggesting that these two economies have the lion's share of the next wave of potential Global 500 companies," said Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of Hurun Report. 

The 47 companies were from 21 cities, led by Beijing with nine and followed by Shanghai and Shenzhen with 7 each. The average age was 24 years, much younger than the 63-year average age of the whole list. 

Apple ranks world's most valuable company, up 15 percent to $2.4 trillion, and the World's Big 4' Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet have doubled in value since the emergence of COVID, adding $4 trillion to take their combined value to $8 trillion, and making up 14 percent of Hurun Global 500 Most Valuable Companies, according to the report.

China's regulators are on the move, reining in some of the country's largest and dominant internet-based platforms to protect free, fair and law-regulated market competition. Chinese market watchers said Chinese regulators will never tolerate, or act as guarantors for "Big Tech" companies gaining a stranglehold on the market and reaping exorbitant profits at the cost of ordinary wage-earners.

Global Times