The People's Daily ran an article on China's 500 biggest companies, comparing them with the world's top 500. Attempting to analyze the reasons that China's top companies are still lagging behind, the article explains that most of China's largest companies are state-owned, and therefore suck.

Of course that's not exactly how they worded it. Try, if you have ten minutes, to translate the below extract from the People's Daily's own translation into real English:

This indicates that the dependence inertia of the Chinese large enterprises on government support for development is still playing a role... For these large state-owned enterprises, the modern enterprise management system is yet to be improved, while the legal form for the reform of part of the large enterprises is not yet clear enough and still the mechanism in some of the large-state-owned enterprises are unable to cater to the new situation of market competition domestic and foreign. Contained by the administrative system and policy, the acquisition and reorganization of the subordinated enterprises are relatively difficult to be implemented there and to certain extent there still exist some different barriers in the reorganization of enterprises and restructure of the assets.

The Chinese version of the article is here (complete with a chart of the top 20 companies); the English 'translation' is here, although the Chinese version is easier to read even if your Chinese reading skills are not all that hot.