China's Olympic champion Liu Xiang says he could bust his own 110m hurdles world record at any time as he steps up a gear to win gold at the World Championships in Japan in August.

Liu has won five of six races run so far this year, including a blistering 12.92sec victory in New York earlier this month, just a fraction off his 12.88 world record pace.

"Right now my fighting spirit and my confidence is so strong, I am very confident going into the World Championships," the Beijing Daily Messenger quoted Liu as saying.

"I think that (a new world record) can be done this year, in fact right now could be a good time.

"But this will be decided by a lot of factors. If I can break the record, it will be hard to say by how much, all I can do is try," he said here at a promotional appearance with new sponsor Amway on Wednesday.

Liu will race at three meets in Europe in July in preparation for the World Championships in Osaka, Japan at the end of August and in early September.

Although he believes he can run faster than his 12.92sec world record mark, Liu says there was little separating the world's top hurdlers, and luck often determined who came out on top.

"Actually I am not as dominant as a lot of people think. In these races my results, compared to the other top competitors, were not that different," Liu said.

"Right now in the 110 metres there are four or five top-level runners, the strengths of all of us are about the same. I won more races because I think I was lucky."

Liu said he is training in Beijing ahead of meets in Paris, Lausanne and Rome from July 6-13.

The 24-year-old has become a national hero since becoming the first Chinese male to win an Olympic track gold medal, at the 2004 Athens Games.

According to the Beijing Daily Messenger, his appeal is reflected by the 10 million yuan (1.3 million dollar) in annual fees he earns for each of his five top corporate sponsorships, including US direct sales giant Amway.

The fee is about 30 times what Liu charged immediately after the Athens Games, the paper said, and is expected to grow as the Beijing 2008 Games approach.

"For the Olympic Games, I will do everything I can, I have participated in one Olympics, so now I have the experience," Liu said.

"But now that I've reached the top, everyone has a lot of high expectations of me, so all I can really do is train hard, do the things that I need to do well and when the time comes try my hardest."