China had 2,154 large industrial enterprises in 2004, 206 more than that of 2003, according to the figures released by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday.

The figures were generated according to the national economic survey of 2004 and the three criteria of revenue from principal operations (300 million yuan or above), total assets (400 million yuan or above) and employment (2,000 or above).

The total earnings of main businesses, total assets, employment and total profits of these 2,154 companies increased 38.5 percent, 21.2 percent, 10 percent and 54.7 percent respectively, compared with that in 2003.

The statistics also indicate that production efficiency of large industrial enterprises has raisedly obviously and their production scale expanded further.

In 2004, the per capita revenue of the major businesses in the large industrial enterprises reached 508,000 yuan (62,640 US dollars), a 26 percent increase over a year ago.

The 2,154 companies accounted for only 0.78 percent of the nation's industrial companies with certain scale. But their revenue from principal operations, total profits, total assets accounted for 39.2 percent, 48.7 percent, 40.2 percent, respectively, of the nation's industrial companies.

There were 159 large industrial companies, each with its revenue from the principal operations surpassing 1 billion yuan (123 million US dollars), 56 more than that in 2003.

According to revenue from principal operation, Shanghai Baosteel Group Corporation, with 161.757 billion yuan (19.95 billion US dollars), ranked first, as it did in 2003. The second and third were the North China Power Gird Company Limited and the China Faw Group Corporation.

The revenue from principal operations of the top ten companies reached 1.038 trillion yuan (128 billion US dollars), up 30.2 percent year-on-year.

There were six companies, each with its assets surpassing 100 billion yuan (12.33 billion US dollars). They were North China Power Gird Company Limited, Shanghai Baosteel Group Corporation, General Electronics Company Limited of Guangdong Province, Dongfeng Motor Corporation, Jiangsu Provincial Power Company, and China Faw Group Corporation. In 2003, only three companies reached 100 billion yuan.

Source: Xinhua