Knowing China's economic influence is much less than that touted by most of the economists that i hear speak, i thought i would look at China's top ten companies and compare them to the U.S.'s top companies. The two lists were generated using the market valuations from the Forbes List of Global 2000 Companies for 2020 and are as follows:
China | 2020 Mkt Cap ($Billions) | United States | 2020 Mkt Cap ($Billions) | |
Tencent Holdings | 773.8 | Apple | 2252.3 | |
Alibaba Group | 657.5 | Microsoft | 1966.6 | |
Kweichow Moutai | 395.8 | Amazon | 1711.8 | |
ICBC | 249.5 | Alphabet | 1538.9 | |
Meituan | 218.6 | 870.5 | ||
Ping An Insurance Group | 211.2 | Tesla | 710.1 | |
China Construction Bank | 210.4 | Berkshire Hathaway | 624.4 | |
China Merchants Bank | 192.8 | Visa | 483.9 | |
Wuliangye Yibin | 155.8 | JPMorgan Chase | 464.8 | |
Agricultural Bank of China | 140.1 | Johnson & Johnson | 427.1 | |
Total | 3205.5 | 11050.4 |
The above table only begins to show the dominance of the United States over China. The largest Chinese company in terms of market value (Tencent Holdings) would place 6th in the United States just outpacing Tesla. The tenth largest Chinese company in terms of market value (Agricultural Bank of China) would place 57th in the United States just in front of Starbucks and Caterpillar.
As of the end of 2020, the market value of the top ten companies in the United States was approximately 3.5 times the market value of the top ten companies in China. If you expand the analysis to incorporate the largest 2000 companies in the world, the market value of United States companies that made the list ($39.1 Trillion) is more than 3.8 times the market value of Chinese companies that made the list ($10.2 Trillion).
And if you are not a number person or you don't believe the data, then i would like you to ask this question of yourself. Who do you think influences the world more: Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Tencent Holdings, or Alababa? All six companies are in the information technology business. My bet your answer is with the first four.
This morning i looked up the stock prices at the beginning of the year and compared to the stock price as of August 31 (first eight months of 2021) for the above twenty companies. All ten U.S. companies stock price had increased, while only two of the ten Chinese companies had increased.
If you had invested $1 million in each of the twenty companies above on January 1 this year, your portfolio of the ten Chinese companies would be worth $8,795,435 (a loss of 12.05%) as of today (September 1), while the value of the United States companies would be worth $12,431,321 million (a gain of 24.31%).
Sadly i do not have access to the Electronic Global Stock Market Board (EGSB) associated with globanomics. If i did i could show the increase and decrease of all the companies in all the stock markets of the world and i could expand my analysis beyond just these twenty. However, if the above is any indication of how the rest of the global stock market companies are doing (and i bet it is), then not only is China's influence in the world of business far behind that of the United States, it is waning further in 2021--and substantially so.
Now that the United States is partnering again with its Allies, China may finally have to recognize that it is far from being the Big Boy in global influence. I only can hope that Biden and his financial/business team recognize the power that they have within their grasp because it is time to replace the United Nations with a new World Federation lead by the United States while implementing globanomics world wide.