Top 10 Chinese Companies in the World by Market Cap

China is the world’s second-largest economy, with a GDP of over $18 trillion that’s predicted to reach almost $25 trillion by 2029. The 10 biggest Chinese companies demonstrate the diversity of this market and the possibilities for success in different sectors, from energy to ecommerce and entertainment.

This article from Business2Community explores the largest Chinese companies by market cap and explains who they are, what they do, and how they are performing.

The 10 Biggest Companies in China

Since many of the largest companies in China are private, state-owned enterprises, we have restricted this list to those that are publicly traded.

They have an impressive combined market cap of $2.36 trillion between them, so let’s take a look at them in more detail.

1. Tencent Holdings Limited – $459.5 Billion

Topping this list of the largest Chinese companies is Tencent Holdings Limited, a multinational conglomerate involved with social media, instant messaging services, video gaming, fintech services, and online advertising.

Tencent is the company behind WeChat and QQ, two of China’s most popular social networks. It also owns or has significant stakes in the studios behind some of the world’s biggest mobile games, including Honor of Kings, PUBG Mobile, and Clash of Clans. Tencent is behind a handful of the most popular PC games like League of Legends and Valorant too.

Tencent Video, a popular video streaming service similar to Netflix, is another of the company’s key services.

Although Tencent’s market capitalization of $459.5 billion is enough for it to comfortably claim the title of China’s largest company, it’s only around half its peak value of $916 billion, which it reached in February 2021.

Tencent is also the second-largest company in Asia by market value, surpassed only by one of the world’s largest semiconductor companies, TSMC, headquartered in Taiwan.

Co-founder and current CEO of Tencent, Ma Huateng, has an estimated net worth of over $35 billion.

2. Kweichow Moutai Co., Ltd. – $254.5 Billion

Moving to a completely different industry, Kweichow Moutai makes its billions producing and distributing “The world’s most mysterious spirit”. The drink in question is Moutai, a high-end baijiu (a type of Chinese distilled spirit) made from fermented sorghum.

The company’s primary source of revenue comes from the domestic market, where Moutai is a sought-after status symbol for business meetings and government functions. According to its 2023 Annual Report, over 97% of its $20.3 billion (147.2 billion CNY) operating revenue came from domestic sales.

Kweichow Moutai is currently the world’s second-largest beverage company by market capitalization, sandwiched between Coca-Cola ($270 billion) and Pepsico ($230 billion), although it held the number one spot for most of 2021-2023.

It has been the world’s most valuable liquor company since 2017 when it overtook British company Diageo, whose brands include Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, and Baileys.

3. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (ICBC) – $252.7 Billion

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (ICBC) is the world’s largest bank by assets held, with $6.3 trillion as of December 2023. It’s one of China’s “big four” banks.

ICBC has its roots in The People’s Bank of China but became a separate operation in 1984 and has been publicly traded since 2005. The commercial bank is still predominantly state-owned, though; four of its top five shareholders are state-owned enterprises and own around 70% of the company’s stocks between them.

Prior to its IPO in 2005, Goldman Sachs invested $2.6 billion to purchase a 5.8% stake in the bank. This was, at the time, the largest sum the firm had ever invested. Dresdner Bank and American Express invested a further $1 billion and $200 million, respectively.

In 2023, ICBC had 12.05 million corporate customers and 740 million personal customers. It achieved a net profit of $50.2 million (365 million CNY).

4. PetroChina Company Limited – $243.2 Billion

PetroChina is the exchange-listed arm of the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). It is the largest producer and seller of oil and gas in China, and the fourth-largest in the world.

Its core business activities include:

• Conducting exploration for crude oil and natural gas
• Developing, producing, and selling oil and gas
• Refining, marketing, and trading crude oil and petroleum products
• Transporting natural gas, crude oil, and other refined products
• Producing and selling other chemical products

PetroChina’s revenue for 2023 was $412 million (3 billion CNY) with a net profit of $25 million (180 million CNY).

Its oil and natural gas equivalent output was 1.76 billion barrels, of which 1.56 billion were distributed domestically and 196 million were exported overseas.

An explosion at one of PetroChina’s chemical plants in 2005 was responsible for killing five, injuring 60, and cutting off the water supply to 3.8 million people in Harbin for five days due to a chemical leak of the toxic carcinogen benzene. Jilin Petrochemical, a PetroChina subsidiary, was ordered to pay the maximum fine of 1 million CNY ($125,000) for the incident.

5. China Mobile Limited – $207.6 Billion

China Mobile is a nationwide telecommunications network that provides mobile and broadband services to almost 1 billion customers, over half of which use its 5G network. Additionally, it services 307 million broadband customers.

Despite being publicly traded, China Mobile is controlled by state-owned China Mobile Communications Group Co., Ltd., which has a 69.81% share in the company. The remaining shares are held by public owners.

In 2023, the company’s revenue exceeded 1 trillion CNY ($138 billion); a 7.7% increase from the previous year. 85.5% of this revenue came from telecommunications services, with the remainder from sales of products and other sources.

China Mobile has been instrumental in developing the nation’s 5G network. In August 2023, it announced that it had developed China’s first first reconfigurable 5G RF transceiver chip, named “Breaking Wind 8676”. This chip enables faster conversion between analog and digital signals and reduces China’s dependence on imports from other countries.

6. PDD Holdings Inc. – $200.2 Billion

The youngest of the 10 largest Chinese companies, PDD Holdings Inc. (formerly known as Pinduoduo Inc.) is a multinational commerce group best known for its Pinduoduo and Temu ecommerce sites.

The company moved its headquarters from Shanghai, China to Dublin, Ireland in 2023, shortly after rebranding to create the PDD parent company for Pinduoduo and Boston-based Temu.

PDD’s revenue has experienced extraordinary growth in the past few years, jumping from 94 million CNY in 2021 to 136 million CNY in 2022 and 248 million CNY ($35 million) in 2023. The company is taking a cautious approach to its future, though, noting in its 2023 Annual Report that “our historical performance may not be indicative of our future growth or financial results”.

Pinduoduo started out in 2015 as an agriculture platform but has since branched out into the wider ecommerce market, although it retains an agricultural element to facilitate sales between small-scale farmers and consumers.

Temu is a newer ecommerce site that launched in the US in 2022 and quickly experienced tremendous growth to become one of the top players in the country. It has since expanded to Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and several other European countries. It offers discounted consumer goods which are predominantly shipped directly from China. Although the platform is known for its low-cost goods, concerns have been raised about product quality and safety, as well as forced labor practices in its vast supply chain.

This CNBC documentary sheds more light on how Temu operates and how it is disrupting the American ecommerce market:

7. Agricultural Bank of China Limited – $197.6 Billion

Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) is China’s second-largest bank by market value and also by total assets held.

ABC is headquartered in Beijing and has over 22,800 domestic branches serving 10.8 million corporate banking customers and 867 million retail banking customers. It also provides wealth management services to 244,000 private customers.

The bank has another 13 overseas branches including New York, London, Tokyo, Singapore, and Sydney.

ABC’s operating income and operating profit showed minimal growth between 2022 and 2023, at 0.03% and 0.3%, respectively. However, the bank’s net profit increased by 4.2%.

The bank was originally established in 1951 under the name Agricultural Cooperative Bank, before being merged into People’s Bank of China in 1952. Agricultural Bank of China was established in 1955 and then merged into the central bank in 1957. It was only in 1979 that the bank was spun off into the company that remains today.

ABC was listed on the Shanghai and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges in 2010. As of December 2023, over 82% of its shares were held by state-owned entities.

8. China Construction Bank Corporation – $187.5 Billion

China Construction Bank Corporation (CCB) is the next of China’s “big four” banks and also the third-largest bank in the world by assets held. It ended 2023 with $5.4 trillion in assets, up 10.76% on the previous year.

CCB has a similar history to the Agricultural Bank of China; it began as a fully state-owned bank before becoming a full-service commercial bank in 1994. It adopted its current name in 1996 and became a publicly traded company in 2005, but remains state-controlled through state-owned shareholders.

Bank of America invested $3 billion in CCB ahead of its IPO, securing a 9.9% stake in the company. It exited in 2013, having sold its stocks in stages, and Reuters estimates that BoA made a profit worth five times its original investment.

CCB provides personal banking services to 757 million individual customers, with an additional 10.82 million corporate and institutional customers. It has over 13,600 domestic branches as well as international branches in locations including Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, Frankfurt, and Sydney.

9. Alibaba Group Holding Limited – $181.9 Billion

Alibaba was founded in 1999 by Jack Ma, a former English teacher from Hangzhou, China. From the outset, he believed in using the internet to help connect small businesses with international markets.

Today, the company is best known for its ecommerce platforms, including Taobao and TMall in China, and Alibaba.com, AliExpress, and Lazada internationally. However, the Alibaba Group includes brands operating in other sectors including:

• Digital entertainment and media
• Logistics
• Cloud computing
• Internet of things
• Technology research and development
• Financial services

In 2023, the firm underwent a major restructuring to separate its operations into six main business units. The details and impact of this structure are covered in this episode of The Impulso Podcast:

Whereas PDD’s market cap has grown steadily in the past two years, Alibaba’s has been on a downward trajectory since its peak of $837.8 billion in October 2020.

10. Bank of China Limited – $171.2 Billion

Ranking as the tenth largest company in China, Bank of China (BOC) is also the oldest on this list. It was formed in 1912 when the Qing dynasty’s Da-Qing Bank, established in 1905, was renamed. It became a fully state-owned commercial bank in 1994.

In 2011, BOC became the first financial institution from an emerging economy to be recognized by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) as a Systematically Important Bank.

BOC has a stronger global presence than some of its competitors, with branches in 62 overseas countries and regions in addition to 10,300 domestic branches.

The bank was the official banking partner of the Beijing Olympics in both Summer 2008 and Winter 2022.

In 2023, BOC reported operating income of 624 billion CNY ($86 billion) with 246 billion CNY ($34 billion) net profit.

Learning From the Biggest Chinese Companies

Putting aside the four state-owned banks, we find a diverse range of successful Chinese companies in sectors ranging from entertainment to ecommerce and energy.

With the exception of PDD and Alibaba, these businesses make the majority of their revenue in the domestic market. Kweichow Moutai has carved out a niche in the luxury market, while China Mobile has dominated the mass market.

Due to the country’s rapidly evolving economy and investment in technology, it wouldn’t be surprising to see this ranking fluctuate in the years to come.

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