Below, we show a list of the world's top 10 largest companies, by market capitalization. The Chinese companies are in bold. In a sign of the bull rally in Chinese stocks, 5 of the top 10 are Chinese.

1. Exxon Mobil Corp., US$511 bil.
2. Petrochina, US$453 bil.
3. General Electric, US$414 bil.

Joseph Yam, the head of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), Hong Kong's Ben Bernanke, now looks set to retire from his position in 2009, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) newspaper. Mr. Yam became head of the HKMA in 1993 and has always been a strong supporter of the Hong Kong dollar peg, which fixes the value of the Hong Kong dollar to the US dollar.

PetroChina's shares bucked the sharp downward trend in Hong Kong today. The Hang Seng Index finally closed down 3.7%, but Petrochina only closed down 0.85% and even traded up during large periods intra-day. Could the company's announcement that it now expects to finally list on the domestic Chinese Shanghai stock market on Nov. 5th have something to do with its steady performance?

Yesterday, we quoted a South China Morning Post article as saying that the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) vice-chairman Tu Guang-Shao indicated that an H-A share arbitrage mechanism was being considered.

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Update to this story here. A spokesman says Mr. Tu was misquoted. Life makes a little more sense.
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Taiwan politics are entertaining, if nothing else. Now comes news that the political wrangling has reached the Post Office. One G.B. Talovich, a teacher no less, is quoted in the South China Morning Post newspaper complaining:

In a previous missive the Red Cat Journal speculated that China's move to allow domestic mainland Chinese investors to invest in the Hong Kong stock market could've been a savvy PR move to support Hong Kong shares during the initial period of the sub-prime meltdown.

On September 27th, the Red Cat Journal reported on an article in The Times of London, which speculated that China's new sovereign wealth fund (SWF) had already invested in the Hong Kong stock market. Read the article here.

China's pension fund is set to receive a 40.4 billion RMB (or about US$5.4 billion) windfall under a new draft rule that will require all state-owned enterprises which listed shares on the market from mid-2006 to contribute the equivalent of 10% of their share offerings to the pension fund.

The two richest people in China are now woman, according the recently released Hurun list of Chinest richest people. Deng Xiao-Ping once said: "To get rich is glorious". If that's true, then there are more and more Chinese basking in glory than ever before.