US Tops China on Fortune 500 List for First Time Since 2018

A Walmart sign is displayed over the entrance to a store, June 25, 2019, in Pittsburgh. Walmart said on April 30, 2024, that it is launching its biggest store-label food brand in 20 years in terms of its breadth of items, as it seeks to appeal to younger customers who are not brand loyal and want chef-inspired foods that are more affordably priced. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

A total of 139 U.S. companies made the 2024 Fortune Global 500 list, topping China’s 133 companies, in a first since 2018.

U.S.-based retailers Walmart and Amazon topped the list, with China’s State Grid electric utility third, followed by the Saudi oil company Saudi Aramco, then Chinese oil firms Sinopec Group and China National Petroleum. American companies rounded out the top 10 with Apple in seventh, followed by UnitedHealth Group, Berkshire Hathaway, and CVS Health.

The list was published just after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced sweeping efforts to control its economy, which analysts predict will only have a limited effect.

China’s economy, which suffered a massive hit stemming from the regime’s prolonged strict COVID-19 lockdowns, shows few signs of recovery.

As prominent hedge fund manager Kyle Bass noted, China’s “miracle” economy of days past relied primarily on real estate to drive growth, so the property sector crash means that the “basic architecture of the Chinese economy is broken.”

The face of that sector is Chinese developer Evergrande, which, at $340 billion in debt is the world’s most indebted company. It was recently ordered to liquidate, with creditors only able to expect the recovery of a fraction of their assets.

At the CCP’s Third Plenum held in mid-July, officials focused on “comprehensive reforms” to bolster the economy through science industries and “socialist modernization,” skirting the massive crater the real estate industry has left in China’s economic outlook.

China analyst Wang He previously told The Epoch Times that the regime’s plans to “centralize” the science and tech industries have their flaws. These industries have weak foundations, he said, as the regime has, for years, fueled these industries through acquiring technology from the West, often through theft, and fraud is rampant in industry.

He’s one of many analysts warning that scientific advances won’t offset the damage the Chinese economy has suffered overall.

“The entire Chinese economy is developing abnormally, with domestic overcapacity and low-price dumping abroad, leading to more and more trade wars and tariff wars with other countries around the world,” Wang said.

The CCP’s economic revitalization efforts also include more than $40 billion in ultra-long-term treasury bonds to local governments to upgrade equipment and invest in consumer goods projects to be allocated before the end of the month.

Hsieh Chin-ho, chairman of Taiwan’s Wealth Magazine, told The Epoch Times that the subsidies are unlikely to be effective, given the weak domestic demand and lagging foreign investment.

“Everyone is leaving China,” he said.

“Local governments used to sell land as their financial resources. Now that the financial resources are cut off, you don’t know whether the 300 billion yuan [$41 billion] will be swallowed up by them after it is distributed.”

Alex Wu, Ning Haizhong, and Luo Ya contributed to this report.