BEIJING, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- Foreign players will be paid no more than 30,000 U.S. dollars a month next season as the Chinese Basketball Association league (CBA) announced a salary cap on Friday.

    The domestic league released the new salary regulation through its official website on Friday. The announcement had been handed down to the 18 CBA clubs on Tuesday.

    Each team is allowed to pay the salaries no more than 60,000 U.S. dollars to its foreign players, and 80,000 dollars in total could the club have one Asian player.

    Most of the CBA teams have two oversea players as allowed by the quota and the military Bayi Rockets have none.

    The salary cap for the team is 55 per cent of the total annual income of the club, which is no less than 5.5 million RMB (about 820,000 U.S. dollars).

    This is the first time the league set a salary cap.

    Chinese players and coaches will not be paid more than one million RMB (about 149,000 U.S. dollars) for a whole season. The averaging annual income of the CBA players and coaches is 500,000 RMB.

    Players and coaches who had spell in the National Basketball Association of America (NBA) are exceptions of the regulations, but their incomes will also be counted into the total payments of the team.