China's fiscal system: A work in progress

Abstract

Public finance matters. It matters for sustained economic growth. It matters for economic stability. It matters for the distribution of income and wealth. It matters for the delivery of such basic services as education and health. It matters for political stability. These statements are as true in China as in any country. What differentiates China from other countries is not that its development is magically unrelated to what its public sector does and how it is financed but rather that the key to its public finance system lies in intergovernmental fiscal relations. Unless China begins to tackle more systematically the serious problems that have emerged in the finances of its various levels ..