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Aerospace firm AVIC in Fortune rank list

By Xin Dingding (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-10 08:05

China's aerospace and defense corporation, AVIC, has nudged into Fortune's Global 500 list for the first time.

Aviation Industry Corporation of China, the nation's leading aircraft manufacturer, ranked 426th in the Fortune Global 500 list revealed on Wednesday, with sales revenue of $21.738 billion and profits of $568 million.

It was the 11th largest in the field of aerospace and defense, placed ahead of Bombardier.

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"It is for the first time that a Chinese aerospace corporation has been listed on the Fortune Global 500. It will be a new mark for us... Our goal is to achieve sales revenue of 1 trillion yuan ($146.36 billion) by 2017," AVIC President Lin Zuoming said yesterday.

The listing is significant as AVIC belongs to the strategic, hi-tech aerospace sector, while all previously ranked Chinese companies were mostly from the resources, telecommunications and finance sectors, said Lu Wei, a senior researcher with the Development Research Center under the State Council.

AVIC was established in November 2008 after merging two leading State-owned aviation manufacturers then, AVIC I, and AVIC II.

Overall, 43 corporations from China have been listed on the Fortune Global 500 this year, up from 35 last year.

Among them, 34 corporations are from the mainland, six from Taiwan and three from Hong Kong.

Oil giant Sinopec is now ninth on the global chart, up from its previous 16th position.

Nine of the 34 mainland corporations are on that list for the first time, including a privately owned steel maker, Jiangsu Shagang Group, ranked at 444th.