The International Business Daily sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC) has lately published its list of 2001 top 500 foreign companies in China, ranked according to their sales volumes.
Shanghai Volkswagen, who had been in the first place for 9 years on end, was elbowed out into the shadow by Motorola (China) Electronics. The latter claimed a sales-volume totaling 31.3 billion yuan from November 2000 to October 2001, becoming a newly emerged "No.1 scholar in China", while that of the year 2000 was 23.7 billion yuan. The total sales volume of the top 500 foreign enterprises registered at 1.08 trillion yuan.
The sales volume for Shanghai Volkswagen in the same period, who had fallen into the second place, is 28.7 billion yuan, a little higher than previous year's 26.7 billion yuan, but much lower than Motorola in growth rate.
The Guangdong Division of China Mobile and China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) ranked the third and fourth with sales volume of 25.5 billion and 18.9 billion yuan respectively. The fifth place went to SAIC- Volkswagen Sales Co., Ltd with a volume of 15.9 billion yuan.
Most of the top 500 foreign enterprises set up their headquarters in Guangdong, Shanghai and Jiangsu in east China.
Last month, Motorola announced in Beijing that it would increase its total investment in China to US$10 billion by the year 2006.
Motorola will spend an extra US$1 billion on research and development in China over five years, making Beijing one of its global R&D bases with the technology core sector to be stationed in the Chinese capital.
Motorola is expected to have up to 5,000 researchers and engineers in China by the year 2006. Currently it has opened 18 R&D centers in China with about 1,000 employees.
The giant has also decided to increase its annual output in China to US$10 billion by 2006.
Christopher Galvin, chairman and chief executive officer of Motorola, said that it shows the significance of the Chinese market that Motorola held this conference in Beijing despite the sluggish world economy.
Motorola, which entered China in 1992, has invested US$3.4 billion in the country and has brought about another US$4 billion to suppliers.
(People's Daily December 7, 2001)
