More than 100 Chinese companies made the Fortune Global 500 list this year, with the U.S. the only country with more names on the list.

China power giant State Grid jumped from seventh place last year to the No. 2 spot, after Wal-Mart Stores Inc., followed by oil giants China National Petroleum Corp. and Sinopec Group, in third and fourth place, respectively.

Dubbed “the world’s most profitable lender,” Industrial & Commercial Bank of China--China's biggest bank by assets--was No. 15 on the list, up from 18th last year even after a year of nearly flat profit.

Among the 13 Chinese companies that made their debuts on the list were three home builders: China Vanke Co.(356th), Dalian Wanda Group (385th) and Evergrande Real Estate Group (496th), which all benefited from the property-market recovery in China last year after the government loosened restrictions on home purchases.

Ranked at 366th, China’s second-largest online retailer, JD.com Inc., also entered the list for the first time.

One notable absence: China’s perhaps most famous company, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., which as an online platform doesn’t have massive revenue, the basis for the list’s rankings.

Investors and analysts have focused on a different metric to chart its growth -- gross merchandise volume, or the total value of third-party sellers’ transactions on its platforms -- because it shows how fast an e-commerce company is growing relative to competitors.

Earlier this year, Alibaba said that transaction volume on its sites hit 3 trillion yuan ($463 billion) in the fiscal year ended in March, which it said meant that by that measure it had overtaken Wal-Mart to become the world’s biggest retail network.



--Yang Jie