Evolving government budget and roles of state

Chengjian Li and Shuanglin Lin

Chapter 2 in Handbook of Public Finance in China, 2026, pp 14-49 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter provides an analysis of the evolution of the government budget in the context of the changes of the role of the Chinese state over its long history. It notes that a modern form of government budget was first enacted only towards the end of the Qing Dynasty. The Republic of China Government, following the 1911 Revolution, adopted a Western-style budget system. The centrally planned budget system practised in the People's Republic of China after the regime change in 1949 stresses the principle of unified state control over revenue and expenditure. As market-oriented economic reforms began in China in 1978, local governments were gradually given enlarged fiscal freedom. Institutionalisation takes time, and the first Budget Law was passed only in 1994. After two further decades, the Budget Law was revised substantially in 2014 to keep up with new developments. The newly revamped law classifies the government budget into four parts: general fiscal budget; government fund budget; social insurance budget; and the budget for state-owned capital operation.

Keywords: Budget Law; Changing role of the rtate; Traditional philosophy; Evolution; Four budgets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035311705
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035311712.00011 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22306_2

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().