China's 500 top brands see 13% jump in value

Two State Grid technicians check power transmission facilities in Chuzhou, Anhui province. [Photo by Song Weixing/For China Daily]

The latest list of 500 most valuable brands in China was released on Wednesday, with the total value of top 500 brands reaching 24.69 trillion yuan ($3.86 trillion) in 2020, a 12.9 percent increase year-on-year, according to consulting and research firm World Brand Lab.

Robert Mundell, chairman of the World Brand Lab and Nobel Prize laureate in economics in 1999, said China's manufacturing output value ($4 trillion) is nearly equal to the US ($2.3 trillion), Japan ($1 trillion) and Germany ($800 billion). Although the growth of Chinese brands has not kept pace with Chinese manufacturing, the success of Chinese brands has been widely recognized.

The value of Chinese brands saw a robust growth since the first list released 17 years ago, with threshold of the top 500 rising from 500 million yuan in 2004 to 2.72 billion yuan in 2020 as well as the average value surging from 4.94 billion yuan to 49.38 billion yuan, a 899.07 percent jump.

World Brand Lab said 55 of the top 500 Chinese brands have global influence, accounting for 11 percent of the total brands.

Beijing has 93 brands among the top 500, taking the first spot, followed by Guangdong and Shandong provinces with 90 and 44, respectively.

State Grid Corporation of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Haier are the top three Chinese brands with highest value, at 503.69 billion yuan, 450.58 billion yuan and 428.65 billion yuan, respectively.

Moreover, 53 Chinese brands' value surpassed 100 billion yuan this year.