Fortune magazine’s yearly global 500 list came out on Wednesday, and for the Chinese tech industry, the results are a little surprising. China’s three biggest internet companies – Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent (BAT) – didn’t make the list at all. In fact, Alibaba rival JD.com was the only Chinese internet company to break into the 500, coming in at number 366.
JD says it is the first Chinese internet company ever to make the list.
How is that possible? The Fortune list is constructed based only on revenue, so it doesn’t factor in gross merchandise volume (GMV). That means that although Alibaba sells nearly US$500 billion in goods each year, most of those sales don’t count towards the Fortune numbers because the items are sold by third parties, not by Alibaba itself. “If you look at the amount of sales on our platform (GMV) […] we are a larger company than even Wal-Mart,” an Alibaba spokesperson told Tech in Asia.
Of course, the Fortune list also doesn’t account for profitability at all. JD also had rather high expenses in FY2015 and ended up posting net losses of well over US$1 billion, whereas Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent all posted operating profits.
Still, making the list is an impressive accomplishment for JD, which says it is the first Chinese internet company ever to do that.
Other Chinese tech firms that appeared came primarily from the telecom and electronics industries. Hon Hai (Foxconn) and Pegatron, two Taiwanese tech manufacturers that do most of their work in China, also made the list. Here’s the full list of Chinese tech companies in the Fortune Global 500 (not including transportation or aerospace as tech).
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