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Southern Finance Omnimedia reporter Wu Jianan reports from Guangzhou

On August 5, the 2024 Fortune Global 500 list was released. The number of companies from mainland China (including Hong Kong) on ​​the list was 128, 7 fewer than last year. Among them, there were 22 companies from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, 14 of which showed positive growth in operating income, and 1 new company was on the list.

From a regional perspective, Shenzhen has 9 companies on the list, followed by Guangzhou with 6, Hong Kong with 5, and Dongguan and Foshan with 1 each. From a corporate ranking perspective, the top company is China Ping An Insurance (Group) Co., Ltd., ranking 53rd. Huawei, Tencent, BYD, GAC, Midea, Luxshare Precision and other companies are all on the list.

Among them, BYD is the Chinese company with the largest ranking improvement, rising 69 places from last year.

Liu Jinshan, a professor at the School of Economics of Jinan University, told Southern Finance and Economics that the list shows the value of "technology-led" enterprises in the Greater Bay Area, which reflects the effectiveness of Guangdong's efforts to promote the digitalization and intelligent transformation of enterprises. The Greater Bay Area must incubate more Fortune 500 companies, strengthen scientific and technological innovation in areas such as artificial intelligence and smart manufacturing that represent new quality productivity, lead industrial development, and cultivate more world-class companies.

More than half of the listed companies have risen in ranking

This year, a total of 22 Greater Bay Area companies were listed in the latest Fortune Global 500, three fewer than last year. More than half (12) of the companies rose in the rankings compared to last year.

In terms of the nature of the enterprises, this year, enterprises with state-owned backgrounds account for a large number of places on the list, including Guangzhou Automobile Industry Group Co., Ltd., Shenzhen Investment Holdings Co., Ltd., Guangzhou Industrial Investment Holdings Group Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Guangzhou Industrial Control"), Guangdong Guangxin Holdings Group Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Guangxin Group") and other 9 state-owned enterprises on the list. It is worth mentioning that Guangzhou Industrial Control and Guangxin Group, which just entered the list last year, have both achieved an increase in ranking this year, up 20 and 13 places respectively.

"This reflects the effectiveness of Guangdong's deepening reform of state-owned assets and state-owned enterprises. The market competitiveness of state-owned enterprises has gradually become prominent, and state-owned enterprises and private enterprises are showing a trend of moving forward in tandem and growing together." Liu Jinshan said that Guangdong's state-owned assets and state-owned enterprises play a leading and guiding role in promoting industrial development. Guangdong's measures to comprehensively deepen the reform of state-owned enterprises have continuously stimulated the market vitality of state-owned enterprises.

In recent years, Guangdong has implemented the action plan to deepen and improve the reform of state-owned enterprises. According to the "one enterprise, one policy" and "one industry, one policy" policies, it has promoted provincial enterprises to compare the implementation plan and the list of key tasks, and cultivated a group of industry leaders, "specialized, refined and innovative" and manufacturing single champion enterprises in a stratified and classified manner. Data shows that from January to June 2024, the enterprises supervised by the Guangdong Provincial State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission achieved a cumulative operating income of 322.433 billion yuan, and the total assets at the end of June were 2624.61 billion yuan, an increase of 5.8% year-on-year.

Take Guangxin Group as an example. After 24 years of reform and development, Guangxin Group has transformed from a foreign trade enterprise into a state-owned capital investment company with manufacturing as its main business, market-oriented, mixed ownership as its characteristics, and capital operation as its advantage. It has formed a "hundred-billion-level" industrial cluster in the nickel iron and stainless steel industries and four "tens of billions of-billion-level" chain leader enterprises in the fields of high-performance aluminum profiles, electronic circuit materials, biological fermentation, digital media, etc.

From the perspective of geographical distribution, the listed companies are still concentrated in the economically developed Pearl River Delta region, especially Shenzhen, which tops the list with 9 companies, accounting for nearly half of the total number of companies in the Greater Bay Area, represented by Huawei, Tencent, BYD, SF Express, etc. Guangzhou has the same number of companies on the list as last year, with a total of 6.

There are 5 companies from Hong Kong on the list.Among them, AIA Group is the only new company on the list of the Greater Bay Area this year. The list shows that the company's profit increased by 1234.8% year-on-year. The remaining companies in Foshan and Dongguan are Midea Group Co., Ltd. and Luxshare Precision Industry Co., Ltd., which just entered the list last year.

"The reason why Shenzhen has 9 companies on the list is that Shenzhen has insisted on enterprise innovation as the main body in recent years. More than 90% of Shenzhen's R&D personnel, R&D funds, and invention patents basically come from enterprises. This Shenzhen model with enterprise innovation as the main body is one of the paths that the entire Greater Bay Area cities can learn from to accelerate development in the future." Liu Jinshan said.

Liu Jinshan believes that Guangzhou and Hong Kong have 6 and 5 companies respectively on the list this year. Among them, one Hong Kong company is the only new company on the list in the Greater Bay Area this year. This is also due to the coordinated development of the innovation network formed by the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Science and Technology Innovation Corridor, indicating that the overall linkage innovation and regional coordination integration level of the Greater Bay Area is constantly improving.

The characteristic of “technology in command” is highlighted

Looking at the industry distribution of companies in the Fortune Global 500, this year's listed companies involve multiple fields including manufacturing, Internet and communications, new energy vehicles, banking and finance, biomedicine, etc., covering a wide range of industries.

It is worth noting that the automobile industry performed well. According to Fortune Chinese, a total of 10 Chinese automobile and auto parts companies entered the list this year. Among these 10 companies, Chery was on the list for the first time, and the rankings of the other nine companies mostly rose year-on-year.

Among them, Shenzhen-based BYD is the Chinese company with the largest ranking improvement. This year, the company's revenue increased from $63 billion last year to $85.1 billion, up 69 places from last year, and its profit increased by 71.7%. Huawei, which provides intelligent driving solutions for the automotive industry, is also a bright spot. The company achieved a profit growth of 132.4% and rose 8 places to 103rd. However, Guangzhou Automobile Industry Group Co., Ltd., which is mainly a long-established joint venture automaker, recorded negative growth in revenue and net profit on this year's list, and its ranking dropped by 16 places.

The ranking changes of relevant automakers actually reflect the trend of automobile manufacturing transforming to new energy vehicles. In the first half of this year, BYD sold 1.6071 million vehicles, continuing to be the leading domestic new energy vehicle company; GAC Group was constrained by the speed of electrification transformation, with cumulative sales of 863,000 vehicles in the first half of the year, a year-on-year decrease of 25.8%. It is imperative for automakers to keep up with the pace of industrial transformation.

Liu Jinshan said that new energy has become the current trend of transformation for automobile companies. Traditional automobile companies represented by GAC Group are facing the challenges of new energy automobile companies and are in urgent need of seeking new transformation routes to achieve growth in corporate operating indicators.

In addition, analyzing the list, it is not difficult to see that taking "manufacturing as the main line of development" and promoting the transformation of enterprises to digitalization and intelligence is still the choice of the listed companies in the Greater Bay Area. Wang Laichun, the founder of Luxshare Precision, has mentioned more than once in public that Luxshare Precision's good results are inseparable from the construction of digital platforms, and will continue to use digital platforms to explore product innovation and operation optimization in the future.

In fact, the "smart manufacturing" transformation of enterprises is closely related to Guangdong's adherence to the real economy and its use of technological innovation to help enterprises accelerate digital transformation. In recent years, Guangdong has formulated opinions on high-quality construction of a strong manufacturing province, promoted the promulgation of regulations to promote high-quality development of the manufacturing industry, and issued the "Ten Measures for Technological Transformation", promoting the digital transformation of more than 5,000 industrial enterprises above a certain scale, and promoting more than 9,300 industrial enterprises to carry out technological transformation, accelerating the transformation and development to advanced manufacturing.

Data shows that in the first half of this year, the growth rate of added value of Guangdong's advanced manufacturing and high-tech manufacturing industries was faster than the overall growth rate of industrial enterprises above the designated size, and investment in advanced manufacturing and high-tech manufacturing increased by 18.6% and 23.9% respectively.

Liu Jinshan said that in order to grow bigger and stronger, manufacturing enterprises must follow the trend of global manufacturing transformation towards digitalization and intelligence. The integration of upstream, midstream and downstream industrial chains can be achieved through digitalization and intelligent transformation, which can achieve economies of scale with increasing returns to scale and economies of scope through diversified operations and adjustment of production process levels to a certain extent. This is also the biggest trend in the digital transformation of enterprises.

"The most striking thing about this list is the value of 'technology in command'." Liu Jinshan said that behind "technology in command" is the digital and intelligent transformation. The Greater Bay Area must incubate more Fortune 500 companies, and in areas such as artificial intelligence and smart manufacturing that represent new quality productivity, it must strengthen scientific and technological innovation to lead industrial development and cultivate more world-class companies.