Fan Gang, a prestigious economist from an elite government think tank, has called for an overhaul of the progressive individual income tax rate as part of China's efforts to boost consumer spending.

Before he made the proposal at the sixth annual session of the China Reform Forum earlier this month, media reports said the government was weighing a plan to raise the waiver amount of taxable individual income from 2,000 yuan ($300) to 3,000 yuan ($430).

Fan, Vice President of the China Economic Restructuring Society, believes that a drop in the individual income tax rate would be more effective to ease the tax burden on middle-income earners, who constitute the majority of the population, and encourage them to spend.

According to Fan's suggestion, the tax rate for people whose monthly taxable income is between 2,000 yuan and 50,000 yuan ($7,350) should be cut by 5 to 10 percentage points to a range between 10 percent and 20 percent.

It's a conventional practice worldwide to impose relatively low income tax rates on moderately paid workers, Fan said.

Fan, who studied at Harvard University from 1985 to 1987, is one of China's top experts on macroeconomics. He is also the only representative of the academic community on the Monetary Policy Committee of the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank.

Silver Screen Winner

First-time nominee Zhang Hanyu, from the Chinese mainland, won this year's Golden Horse Film Award for Best Actor on December 6 in Taiwan, edging out action star Jet Li.

Zhang was awarded for his role in the war blockbuster Assembly, which features the background of China's civil war in the first half of the 20th century. In the film, Zhang was cast as Captain Gu Zidi of the Communist Party of China-led army, who is the only survivor of a deadly battle against Kuomintang troops. Gu later participates in the Korean War. In the following years, he spends all his efforts winning recognition for his deceased comrades, whose names were mistakenly put on the list of missing soldiers.

Zhang, 44, graduated from the Beijing-based Central Academy of Drama in 1988. The $11.6-million Assembly, which netted 260 million yuan ($36 million) at the box office after it was released at the end of 2007, is the first film he starred in over the past two decades.

The annual Golden Horse Film Awards, which was inaugurated in Taiwan in 1962, are known as "Oscars for Chinese-language films." Its competition is now open to productions from Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland and elsewhere. Zhang is the third mainlander to claim the Best Actor title, following Xia Yu (1996) and Liu Ye (2001).

U.S. Surgeon China Favorite

Orthopedic surgeon Thomas Clanton has become the most recognized U.S. doctor in China, after he performed an operation to remove four small pieces of bone from Olympic champion hurdler Liu Xiang's right foot at the Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center on December 5.

Liu, who withdrew from Olympic competition due to a painful Achilles calcific tendonitis, is the second Chinese sports icon to go under Clanton's knife. In March, the team doctor for the NBA's Houston Rockets operated on basketball star Yao Ming's left foot that had suffered a stress fracture injury. Yao successfully recovered and inspired the Chinese team to the Olympic quarterfinals in Beijing this August.