12月9日上午，我院财政学系许云霄副教授以”Market Towards Right, Government Toward Left”为题在美国明尼苏达大学Humphrey 公共事务学院作学术演讲，许云霄从中共十八届三中全会提出的改革方案解读开始，谈到了政府政策的成功和不足之处，并以传统文化为背景分析了中国经济发展的优势与劣势。随后，重点探讨了中国的预算改革。许云宵就有关问题与Humphrey 学院的师生进行了热烈的讨论。
（财政学系 供稿）
附：演讲摘要
In China’s emerging market economy, the Central Government has shifted from its role from an omnipotent planner toward being a producer of public goods. This shift has prompted China’s public financial management to adopt some reform measures in the past twenty years:
§ Budgeting. All government departments must prepare their expenditure budgets to request for appropriations from the legislature. A new budget classification scheme went into effect in 2007, with new categories for revenues and expenditures to enhance budget transparency and facilitate closer budget oversight.
§ Budgetary Control. Revenues and expenses are managed separately. This is intended to prevent gross revenues from being offset by expenses. Off-budget funds were abolished.
§ Treasury Management. All revenue collections and spending are conducted through a single account set up by the Treasury Department at agent banks, instead of the Ministry of Finance allocating funds to separate accounts for spending departments to draw from at their discretion. “Little treasuries” were closed.
§ Government Procurement. All government departments are required to purchase their goods and services through a central procurement system that uses public bidding.
§ Accrual Accounting and Financial Reporting. Government hospitals and universities are required to use accrual accounting, even though administrative units have not. Some provincial and local governments are preparing accrual-based financial statements on a trial basis at year end.
Problems to be solved
§ Changes to Budget Preparation Procedures，strengthen the power of the National people’s congress on government budget.
§ Introduction of an appropriate and comprehensive legal framework that guarantees the universality of the budget, at least restricts the emergence of extraordinary budgets and thus helps reduce the discretionary scope of decision-makers;
§ Strengthening of the rights of members of parliament in the budget preparation process;
§ Improvement of transparency and accountability in preparation of the budget;
§ Establishment of a transparent budget system and performance-oriented budgets.
Conclusion
The plenum “Decision” is perhaps the best reform package we can get at the moment if we take into account the fact that these new leaders only took office in just one year, including the social, economic and political constraints. In this regard, Chinese new leaders’ efforts, strength and political skills should be highly praised and appreciated. However, some of the messages in the “Decision” may conflict with each other some reform goals are still too vague, some reforms might be just intermediate steps towards a truly appropriate system for China, and some reforms might not be effectively carried out.
