Foreign companies accounted for more than half of China's foreign trade, taking almost three in every five dollars in imports and exports last year.

The 2005 Top 200 list of China's importers and exporters listed 148 foreign companies, up 50 percent from 2001, while four privately-owned Chinese companies also elbowed their way on to the list.

"Compared with state-owned and collectively-owned firms, foreign and privately-owned companies showed greater growth potential in terms of imports and exports after China became a World Trade Organization (WTO) member,"said Zhang Lichuan, director of the China Customs Statistics Department.

United States telecommunications giant Motorola was the top foreign-owned exporter in fourth place with exports worth 6.45 billion U.S. dollars, while Republic of Korea telecommunications and electronics giant Samsung was the top foreign-owned importer, bringing in goods worth 4.32 billion dollars and ranking ninth overall.

The list showed 39 state-owned, nine collectively-owned and four privately-owned companies gained the biggest share of export value, while 130 foreign, 60 state-owned, six collectively-owned and four privately-owned companies gained the biggest share of import value.

The nature of China's foreign trade and its economy was reflected in the rankings: top importer was the China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) with imports valued at 24.72 billion U.S. dollars.

Chinese oil firms Petrochina, China Petrochemical International Business Corp. and Sinochem ranked fourth, fifth and sixth respectively in imports.

In 2005, foreign companies reaped 831.7 billion dollars from imports and exports, 58.5 percent of the country's total, up 7.7 percentage points over 2001.

Privately-owned companies raked in 167.4 billion dollars of the import and export value in 2005, 18.2 times more than 2001, from 1.7 percent of the total import and export value in 2001 to 11.8 percent in 2005 with an annual increase of 109.4 percent.

Privately-owned companies contributed 17.4 percent of the country's trade.

Zhang said self-employed business people would likely feature prominently on future lists since being allowed engage in foreign trade in July 2004. Imports and exports by self-employed business people jumped to 140 million dollars in 2005 from 4.2 million dollars in 2004.