Society

China's top legislature on Thursday adopted an amendment to individual income tax law, which raises the monthly tax exemption threshold from 2,000 yuan ($307.7) to 3,500 yuan($538.5).

The adjusted threshold is 500 yuan greater than the amount originally proposed in a previous draft of the amendment, which was submitted to the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee on Monday for its second reading.

The new exemption threshold was agreed upon after the legislature held two meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday to listen to its members' opinions. It was during these meetings that the NPC's Law Committee proposed raising the threshold to 3,500 yuan.

The amendment was "necessary and timely" and will reduce tax burdens for people with low incomes, as well as help to adjust the distribution of income, according to the committee's proposal.

China’s Jiaozhou Bay Bridge, the world’s longest cross-sea bridge, linking the eastern port city of Qingdao and the offshore island Huangdao, opens on June 30, 2011.

China has opened the world's longest cross-sea bridge.

Mao's proverb that 'women hold up half the sky', has yet to be appreciated, write Michael Forsythe and Yidi Zhao.

Li Rong had checked all the boxes for entry into China's governing class.

A Communist Party member and head of student government for her department at Beijing Normal University, she had an offer to join the staff at a local party propaganda department upon graduation in 1999. She said no, avoiding government service in a country where few women rise to the top.

''Women leaders are assigned to be in areas like health and all the departments with real power over the economy will be run by men,'' said Ms Li, now 34 and studying for a doctorate in education at the Chinese University in Hong Kong. ''I don't see the possibility for a future.''

China announced Sunday that it and Vietnam had agreed to hold talks on how to resolve conflicts arising from a sovereignty dispute over the South China Sea, an issue that has escalated tensions between them and led to angry protests by the Vietnamese.

The announcement came after Dai Bingguo, the senior Chinese official in charge of foreign affairs, met with Ho Xuan Son, a Vietnamese vice foreign minister and special envoy, on Saturday in Beijing, according to Xinhua, China’s state news agency.

Xinhua said both countries had agreed to “adopt effective measures to jointly safeguard peace and stability of the South China Sea” and to take seriously a multination pact reached in 2002 that was supposed to help resolve territorial disputes. The pact has long been ignored.