A total of seven Chinese companies have placed on the 2018 Forbes list of the world’s 100 most innovative enterprises.
Online giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. came first out of the seven in 25th position, followed by travel services website Ctrip.com International Ltd at 28.
The five other Chinese firms include metals company China Molybdenum Co., search engine Baidu Inc, pharmaceutical company Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine, surveillance equipment company Hangzhou Hik Vision Digital and China Shipbuilding Industry Corp.
China’s showing in 2018 marks a sharp decline compared to 2017 when 22 Chinese firms found a spot on the Forbes list, including gene company Da An Gene Co., Ltd. at 10th position, and animation company Alpha Group at 19th.
China nonetheless tied with Japan as the country with the second largest number of companies on the list. The United States took first place, host to 51 of the world’s most innovative firms.
The Forbes list of the world’s most innovative company is compiled by its partner entity Innovator’s DNA.
Its chief metric is the “innovation premium,” which measures the difference between the market capitalisation for a company and the net present value of cash flows derived from existing businesses.
The list excludes companies in the energy and mining sectors, given that their market values are heavily impacted by prices for commodities.
