The province, currently the biggest GDP contributor on the Chinese mainland, is expecting its GDP to grow by nine-percent a year over the next five years, said Zhang, secretary of Guangdong provincial committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

    Guangdong's GDP reached 2.59 trillion yuan last year, accounting for 12.5 percent of the country's total GDP, up from 11.1 percent in 2001.

    The GDP of the rapidly developing province is expected to surpass Taiwan's GDP of 355.6 billion U.S. dollars, or 2.77 trillion yuan in 2006.

    Guangdong surpassed the GDP of Hong Kong and Singapore in 2005 when its GDP hit two trillion yuan.

    "Guangdong will continue to open and reform and take as priority the coordinated development between rural and urban areas," said Zhang, in his report to the 10th Guangdong Provincial CPC Congress which opened on Monday.

    Zhang said Guangdong will strive for a 16-percent drop in energy consumption per unit GDP over the next five years.

    Guangdong also aims to "build an overall affluent society by 2011, with the Pearl River Delta area, another economic engine of the province, leading the province to realize basic socialist modernization," according to the congress.

    Guangdong, with a population of 91 million in 2005 about sevenpercent of the country's total, was the first to benefit from the country's opening up and reform polices put forward in 1978. The province now has three special economic zones.