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Northeast China boasts the "comparative advantages and conditions" for the country's fourth biggest regional economy only after the Pearl river delta, the Yangtze river delta and areas around the Bohai sea, a senior economic official said Tuesday.

Song Xiaowu, deputy director of the State Council's office of northeast China revitalization, said the region "has begun to recover," at a press conference for the first blue-paper book on the development of northeast China.

He cited the region's increases of economic output, overall investment, foreign capital and residents' income, which all surpassed the national average in recent years.

Urban residents in northeast China, covering the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang, enjoyed a 38 percent surge on year in 2005 income, creating favorable conditions for consumer spending, while materialized foreign investment soared 87.7 percent to 6.26 billion U.S. dollars last year.

Bao Zhendong, president of the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, agreed, saying "the growth in northeast China is on track to accelerate."

Northeast China's per capita gross domestic product, however, made up only one third of that of the Pearl river delta in south China in 2004, government figures show.

Song said the key to the northeast China success lies in turning an old rustbelt into a state-of-the-art and liberalized industrial base.

The region now accounts for 40 percent of China's crude oil output, half of its timber production and a quarter of the country's auto output, and analysts agree it serves as a window for China's opening to northeast Asia.