For the first time in China, tech companies surpassed state firms as the country’s most valuable brands. According to Reuters, the annual rankings, which are based on an analysis of revenue and consumer response and only include publicly traded companies, placed Tencent Holdings Ltd and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in the lead.

Tencent is an Internet service portal and social media giant in China. Its value impressively increased by 95 percent from 2014 and is now at $66 billion. For reference, Tencent is more valuable than Facebook and is fifth in the world for brand value behind Apple, Google, IBM and Microsoft. Alibaba, the “e-commerce powerhouse,” ranked No. 2, has a brand value of close to $60 billion. The country’s three largest Internet companies, which includes Baidu Inc, are among the rankings’ top five.

According to Doreen Wang, head of BrandZ at Millward Brown, the research affiliate of the advertising company WPP Plc, the tech companies’ new footing can be attributed to the rise of Internet finance and the decline of big bank profits.

Again per Reuters, the total value of China’s top 100 brands grew by a record-setting 59 percent from 2014, to more than $460 billion, compared to the world’s top 100 brands, which experienced a growth of 41 percent.

On topic, as Chinese tech companies’ value continues to grow, the need for native-language expertise within U.S. firms will also continue to grow. Learn more in LLM, Inc.’s latest white paper, “On the Same Page: TAR for Asian languages.”