June 27^th, because of cash crunch, slower growth and the U.S. biggest stock rally in a decade, Chinese companies dropped out of the ranks of the world's 10 biggest stocks by market value for the first time since 2006.

Like Us on Facebook

PetroChina Co. was still the world's sixth-biggest company in May. However, according to data compiled by Bloomberg based on prices yesterday, PetroChina Co. lost $35 billion in market value this month to $214 billion, dropping to 12^th in June. And Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. fell four places to 13th after losing $28 billion. Johnson & Johnson, the top maker of health care products, and Wells Fargo & Co. took over the Chinese firms' places. However, PetroChina's market value was just $2.2 billion below that of International Business Machines Corp. and $3.8 billion less than Wells Fargo, which means the rankings could shift again with any rally in Chinese equities. Now all of the 10 largest companies are from the U.S.

As the American housing and jobs markets are improving, the current gap between China's stocks and U.S. stocks is the most since 2008. Being the world's second-largest economy, China's stocks climbed 345 percent over the past decades and used to account for half of the world's top 10 in 2007. But now China's stocks are falling as the country struggles to develop a consumer market while the government tries to clamp down on a credit boom, in order to preventing the bad loans and bank failures from deepening the slowdown.

"Investors are looking at the U.S. because there are actually signs of growth, versus China where it's exactly the opposite," Wayne Lin, a money manager at Baltimore-based Legg Mason Inc. said. "What you see is really the growth expectations flipping."