Nike, Apple and McDonalds are household names... but what about China Mobile? Advertising giant WPP says Chinese companies are climbing up the brand acknowledgement ladder. A WPP survey has calculated the value of China’s top 50 brands, based on business performance and consumer feedback. China Mobile topped the list, while the other top five slots are dominated by financial institutions. The quickest risers are technology and consumer goods brands.

Valued at 53.6 billion U.S. dollars, China Mobile tops the list for the second year in a row in the "BrandZ Top 50 Most valuable Chinese Brands," conducted by global brand agency Millward Brown, a subsidiary of advertising giant WPP. Despite the gloomy global economy, China’s top 50 brands recorded robust growth in 2011.

Doreen Wang, group account director of Millward Brown China said: "China’s top 50 brands are worth nearly 325 billion U.S. dollars. They make up more than 5 percent of China’s GDP. Compared to last year’s top 50 Chinese brands, this year’s top 50 Chinese brands grew 16 percent in total value. This is twice the speed of China’s economic growth."

Chinese internet companies are boosting their presence, with three of the six newcomers internet giants. They are RenRen, Ctrip and Sohu. In sixth place, the brand value of China’s Google-equivalent Baidu rocketed 67 percent to 16 billion U.S. dollars. China’s massive market is helping to provide the fuel for these companies’ to grow. Gonzalez says the rise of these web firms has also changed China’s consumer landscape.

Adrian Gonzalez, head of Millward Brown, Greater China said: "If you make a promise, you’ll have to live up to that because you’ve got judges and juries sitting out there all in a connected fashion, who are very fast at negatively commenting on you. I think that’s probably the biggest differential in China to a lot of foreign markets right now. It’s not just the numbers, but it’s the connectivity of consumers."

A surge of 240 percent in brand value pushed web company Sina from number 40 up to 25 in this year’s study. Sina’s two-year-old microblogging service, Weibo, has attracted 227 million users.