The list – to be included in the August 31 issue – used to only track US companies and for the first time refers to businesses around the world, Fortune said.

“Since the Great Depression, some companies just keep growing. And not only in the US,” it said.

Bill Powell, Fortune’s Shanghai-based editor, said a lot of US firms took a hit from the global crisis with the financial services industry and its suppliers being “the biggest casualties,” while that was “less true” in China.

“Obviously the financial crisis cut a broad swath through growth certainly in the US in the fourth quarter of last year – basically the economy fell off the table,” he told AFP.

“And while we had slower growth here in China for the year as a whole, obviously growth was strong.”

Companies were ranked based on their revenue, profit growth and total return in the past three years.

Canada’s Research in Motion, producer of the popular Blackberry smartphone, landed in the first spot with a three-year average earnings-per-share growth of 84 percent, revenue growth of 77 percent and total return of 45 percent.

The other three Chinese firms on the list are online ticket and hotel reservation agency Ctrip.com International at 38, telecom software solution provider AsiaInfo Holdings at 40 and China Medical Technologies in 73rd place.

Internet companies have thrived in China, which has the world’s largest number of web users at 338 million – more than the entire population of the US.

Source: AFP