(Yicai) Aug. 5 -- Jiangsu has been closing the gross domestic product gap with Guangdong year by year, but is still unlikely to displace it as China’s largest provincial-level economy, a title Guangdong has held since 1989, according to experts.

Jiangsu’s economy grew 5.8 percent to CNY6.33 trillion (USD887.1 billion) in the first half from a year earlier, while Guangdong’s expanded 3.9 percent to CNY6.52 trillion, shrinking the gap to CNY191.6 billion from CNY240 billion (USD26.8 billion from USD33.6 billion) over the period.

Their different development models account for the narrowing disparity, according to the experts. Guangdong has a ‘pole-driven model,’ with its two core cities of Guangdong and Shenzhen powering the growth of surrounding cities, while Jiangsu has a ‘balanced gradient development model.’

Of Jiangsu’s top 10 cities by economic growth, nine reported figures of over 5 percent, with the fastest clip at 6.2 percent. The 10th city was Nanjing, which logged GDP growth of 4.4 percent.

Cities in Guangdong were much more unbalanced. Shenzhen and Dongguan saw their economies widen 5.9 percent and 5.3 percent, respectively. Guangzhou, Maoming, and Zhanjiang reported GDP growths of less than 2 percent.

But Jiangsu on the coast will not surpass Guangdong in the south for GDP because the latter has more overall strengths in terms of key indicators, according to the specialists.

Industrial enterprises above the designated size based in Guangdong had total profit of CNY1.06 trillion last year, compared with CNY934.4 billion for those in Jiangsu. Moreover, Guangdong’s tax revenue totaled CNY2.16 trillion last year, more than double Jiangsu’s CNY1.56 trillion.

Guangdong had 872 listed firms with a combined market capitalization of CNY12.43 trillion (USD1.7 trillion) as of the end of last year, versus 690 worth CNY6.42 trillion for Jiangsu.

As of Dec. 31, Guangdong was home to 75,000 high-tech companies, 47 percent more than Jiangsu. Guangdong’s port container throughput was 72.1 million twenty-foot equivalent units, 2.8 times more than Jiangsu.

In terms of population, Guangdong had 1.03 million new births last year, while only 409,000 babies were born in Jiangsu in the same period.

Editor: Futura Costaglione