In May, BusinessWeek's Chinese-language edition awarded its first Greener China Business Awards to 10 Chinese and multinational companies, recognizing their efforts to adopt and promote environmentally responsible practices in China. A panel of experts and BusinessWeek reporters nominated more than 60 companies.

From this list of nominees, our expert judges based their rankings on the transformational and verifiable improvements the companies have made to China's environment. The awards are aimed at companies that produce and sell green technologies, as well as those that have cleaned up their own operations by cutting pollution and reducing resource use. Our list of winners was also vetted by independent experts, such as Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public & Environment Affairs in Beijing.

BusinessWeek's expert judges:

• Daniel C. Esty, Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law & Policy, Yale University
• Hu Tao, coordinator, U.N.-China Climate Change Partnership Framework Program, Beijing
• Khee Poh Lam, professor of architecture, Carnegie Mellon University
• Peggy Liu, chair, Joint U.S.-China Cooperation on Clean Energy, Shanghai
• Ma Zhong, dean and professor, School of Environment & Natural Resources, Renmin University of China, Beijing
• Karen R. Polenske, professor of regional political economy and planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• David Victor, director, Program on Energy & Sustainable Development, Stanford University
• Changhua Wu, Greater China director, Climate Group, Beijing
• Robert Wu, chairman and CEO, U.S.-China Green Energy Council, Palo Alto, Calif.
• Xu Lin, China analyst, RepuTex, Shanghai
• Zhou Weidong, China director, Business for Social Responsibility, Guangzhou