Public Finance in China since the Late Qing Dynasty

How is "public finance" organized in China? Is China’s public finance system different from that of other countries? Can we detect features which link today’s system to the past? Public finance refers to more than annual state budgets and constitutional procedures. It includes foreign debt, state monopolies or monetary policies, all of which played a crucial role in China’s public finance during the last hundred years. A purely legislative definition obscures the fact that changes in public finance have contributed to the collapse of political regimes such as Imperial China (1911), Republican China (1927), and KMT-China (1945), as well engendered regime changes in 1949, 1961 and 1978. From a more comprehensive economic perspective public finance in China encompasses institutions, organizations and policies.