BEIJING: The first-ever listing of China's top 500 manufacturers shows that foreign investors are involved in two-thirds of these selected companies.

The survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics demonstrated the country's lop-sided industrial development and reinforced a widely held belief that China's manufacturing power is really the success of its foreign investment policy.

Less than half of the companies on the list were state-owned companies as only 225 state-owned firms made to the category of top 500.

This observation needs to be viewed somewhat differently as many of the so-called private Chinese firms are substantially owned by state-owned agencies, local municipal governments and state-run banks.

The survey showed that more than 75% of the top 500 are located in east China, with the highest number in the Jiangsu province.

There was also heavy concentration on certain sectors. For instance, five of the top ten manufacturing companies are in the steel sector and two in the automobile sector. Two of the top 10 - Legend Holdings Ltd and Haier Group Corporation - are in the electronic sector.

BaoSteel, China First Automobile Group and Dongfeng Motor Co, Legend Holdings and Haier Group Corporation are among the companies with annual sales revenues exceeding 100 billion yuan ($12.5 billion).

Among the foreign companies, Motorola with $9.28 billion in sales topped the list and ranked 6th largest manufacturer in China last year. Nokia Oyi was the second largest foreign manufacturer and 12th largest in China. It was followed by General Motors Corp, the world's largest automaker, which was ranked the third-largest foreign firm and No 14 overall in China.

Most of top 500 are in just five sectors: Telecomm, IT and electronics manufacturing; transportation and communication equipment manufacturing; fertilizer raw material and chemical product manufacturing; ferrous metal smelting & rolling and textiles.