The southern province of Guangdong, currently the richest province on the Chinese mainland in terms of GDP, is poised to overtake Taiwan by 2008.

"Guangdong's GDP is expected to top 2.6 trillion yuan (325 billion U.S. dollars) this year, up 60 billion over last year, andwill grow at least 30 billion U.S. dollars annually in the coming years," said vice governor Zhong Yangsheng at a recent meeting on financial reforms.

"This will soon cancel out the 80-billion-U.S.-dollar gap between Taiwan and Guangdong as the Taiwan economy is only growing by around 10 billion U.S. dollars a year," he said.

The south China industrial powerhouse posted economic growth of14.1 percent in the first three quarters with GDP topping 1.8 trillion yuan (225 billion U.S. dollars), according to figures released by the provincial statistical bureau.

Governor Huang Huahua predicted the growth momentum will continue into the fourth quarter.

He said Guangdong was expected to post 500 billion yuan (62.5 billion U.S. dollars) in annual fiscal revenue and 500 billion U.S. dollars of foreign trade, 30 percent of China's total.

As China's economic engine, Guangdong outperformed Hong Kong and Singapore last year with 2.17 trillion yuan, or 264.844 billion U.S. dollars, of GDP, 11.9 percent of China's total.