BUSINESSES based in China ranked among the most profitable and experienced the highest sales growth next to Japan in this year's Asiaweek list of the top 1,000 companies in the region.
''Much of the strong growth outside Japan is fuelled by mainland industrial companies. Of the 18 China-based companies in the Asiaweek 1,000, 12 are among the 100 firms with the largest revenue increases,'' said the business magazine's research team.
''Many of these firms appear on the list for the first time after adopting internationally accepted accounting practices,'' it said.
CITIC Pacific recorded the highest sales growth, a 7,013.6 per cent increase to US$1.07 billion for the financial year, and was in the top 20 of companies posting profit increases.
Asiaweek expects more Chinese companies to make the list and climb higher in the next two years, reflecting an eventual mainland dominance of the regional economy.
The index, which ranks regional companies by sales, contains 736 Japanese firms. But with the recession 400 of them recorded a drop in profits and 54 reported losses.
Japan's Itochu Corp ranked as Asia's biggest company with sales of $146 billion in the financial year to July 1993, but it placed 229th in net profit.
