So we have a handful of Chinese companies that haven't grown up by the traditional method of attaching an umbilical cord to the government and receiving endless amounts of financial support and monopoly status in return. These "Second Mouse" ventures are going head to head, both in China and around the world, with entrenched, Western-style multinationals. The question is: can they really compete?

Considering the astonishing growth of China's economy over the past decade, it should come as no surprise that 73 Chinese companies showed up on this year's Fortune Global 500. That's up from 11 just ten years ago, but given that fact that the nation saw average annual GDP growth of 9.91 percent between 1979 and 2010, and is now the world's second largest economy, one might ask why more Chinese companies aren't on Fortune's list.