The People's Bank of China (PBoC), the country's central bank, announced on Monday afternoon that three new outside scholars had been appointed to be members of its monetary policy committee.

The three are prominent scholars within the Beijing economics community.

Born in 1950, Zhou Qiren has a doctorate from the University of California and now heads the National School of Development at Peking University. He researches neo-institutional and development economics.

Xia Bin, 59 years old, is a prominent local scholar on the financial system and heads the Financial Research Institute of the Development Research Center of the State Council, one of the country's top think-tanks. His research focuses on macroeconomic policy, monetary policy, financial regulation and the development of China's capital market.

Li Daokui, 47 years old, has a doctorate from Harvard University, and is dean of Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management's Finance Department and director of Tsinghua's Center for China in the World Economy. He studies in development economics, international economics and corporate finance.

Meanwhile, Fan Gang, director of the Beijing-based National Economic Research Institute of China Reform Foundation, who joined the committee in August 2006, will step down from the committee.

By increasing the number of positions for outside scholars, the new appointments will push the committee, headed by the central bank's governor Zhou Xiaochuan, to 15 members.

The committee is mainly composed of officials from the central bank and other central financial government organs;it serves as a consulting body to the central bank for monetary policy.

However, the central bank did not give out information as to when Fan Gang's term expired or when the three new members would take up their posts.

According to central bank regulations, the term of membership for financial scholars in the committee is two years.

The Committee's 15 Members