China adopted a law on Saturday to raise the individual income tax threshold, a move aimed at easing the financial burden on a population facing the highest rate of inflation in more than a decade.
The tax threshold will be raised to 2,000 yuan ($271) a month from 1,600 yuan, effective from March 1, 2008, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Authorities hope the revision will increase households' disposable income, helping lower-income earners cope with inflation, which blazed to an 11-year high in November of 6.9 percent driven largely by rapidly rising food prices.
Aware that inflation has been at the root of unrest in the past, China's ruling Communist Party has been making efforts to keep a lid on prices, including offering subsidies to pig farmers to encourage them to rear more hogs.
Chinese lawmakers also adopted the country's first-ever anti-drug law, as a week-long session of the Standing Committee of its rubber-stamp legislature came to a close.
The law is aimed at curbing rising drug-related crime and reducing the number of users in China.
China virtually wiped out drug abuse after the Communist Party came to power in 1949. But as market reforms have taken root and its borders opened to trade, drugs have become a problem, including the use of "party drugs" such as ecstasy and ice among its newly wealthy urban youth.
The law holds owners and managers of night-clubs and bars responsible for reporting drug users to the police.
It also expands police powers, authorising police to search people and luggage for illegal drugs at public places such as train and bus stations and at border crossings. The law, to take effect next June, also allows some addicts, including mothers of nursing babies, to be rehabilitated within their communities, rather than in isolated centres.
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