Outbound investment activity in the PRC last year has awed speculators as the volume of total mainland investment abroad has reached a record high of US$31.5 billion by mid-December, which is seven times more than that in 2003 when the total volume was only US$3.77 billion.

Looking ahead to 2008, Richard Sun, partner of PriceWaterHouseCoopers said the trend for mainland acquisition abroad will continue as the country's huge amount of US dollar reserves significantly encourages the government to diversify investments.

"Corporations are waiting [for] opportunities to come up. Once there is a good opportunity, good target and a good price, I am sure that they would go outside of China," Sun said.

Gregory Puff, head of M&A in Asia at O'Melveny & Myers, considered the weak dollar as a factor that's more likely to attract the mainland companies. "It is still very difficult for Chinese companies to finance an outbound acquisition. I think they'll be more likely to pay with cash that they have, than to go out and to borrow money in the US to finance an acquisition," he said.

While energy and raw materials sectors are widely expected as the most t active sectors in outbound investment, financial services are also considered as the strong players in the PRC.

"The Chinese banks are very big; they are powerful; they are profitable, and they are not very global, so they have an imperative to become more global and look more like their competitors like Citigroup and the Japanese banks," Puff said.