Alibaba's Executive Chairman Jack Ma delivers a speech at an investor conference at the company's headquarters in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang province, June 14, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

E-commerce giant Alibaba Group has topped Fortune magazine's annual ranking of the China's 50 Most Admired Companies in 2016.

Alibaba Group, which has topped the 50-company-list for the fourth consecutive year, is followed by telecoms giant Huawei, home appliance giant Haier, Internet giant Tencent, and property and entertainment giant Wanda. More than half of the top ten China's most admired companies come from Internet and high tech industries, but China's search engine giant Baidu failed to make the list.

The list, established in 2006, is considered to be the barometer of Chinese companies' soft power. The latest list evaluates the corporate reputation of 294 Chinese companies through nine criteria, including innovation, people management, use of corporate assets, social responsibility, quality of management, financial soundness, long-term investment value, quality of products/services and global competitiveness.