HANGZHOU, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- Profits of the top 500 enterprises in China exceeded that of their counterparts in the United States, a domestic ranking report said Saturday.

    Net profits of the Chinese companies are 170.6 billion U.S. dollars in the first half of this year, while the figure for the U.S. companies are 98.9 billion U.S. dollars, according to a report released by the China Enterprise Confederation (CEC) and China Enterprise Directors Association.

    Although the net profits for the Chinese heavyweights are down 12.4 percent from a year ago, it is still less than a 84.67 percent fall for the U.S. companies, which see the worst decline in 55 years recorded by the U.S. Fortune magazine.

    Wang Jiming, vice president of CEC, said although the business data showed that the Chinese companies were less vulnerable to the global financial crisis than the U.S. counterparts, it did not mean they have made substantial improvements in comprehensive competitive power.

    He said Chinese enterprises enjoy relatively better policies and domestic market environment.

    Chinese companies still lacked behind world's leading enterprises in resource allocation, innovation, international presence, business model and corporate culture, he noted.

    The threshold of this year's top 500 companies in China is raised to 10.54 billion yuan (1.55 billion U.S. dollars) for sales revenue, compared with last year's 9.31 billion yuan.