1997 In the second half of the year, the Southeast Asian financial crisis originating in Thailand brought a huge impact on the global economy, and global trade and economic growth slowed down significantly, which also seriously affected China's economy. In the severe and complicated domestic and international economic environment at that time, the China government assessed the situation, decisively adjusted the macro-control strategy, and implemented a proactive fiscal policy and a prudent monetary policy.

First, concerns about China's long-term vision of a proactive fiscal policy.

Due to the current market situation in China, the overall situation has changed from "economic shortage" to "economic surplus", which may become a "normal state" of China's future economic operation. The concern about this issue actually reflects people's worries about China's massive fiscal deficit and the government's solvency in recent years.

First of all, there is no doubt that the implementation of "expansionary" fiscal policy (that is, proactive fiscal policy) can really promote economic growth in the short term. However, no matter which country, the implementation of "expansionary" fiscal policy will eventually be restricted by the national financial capacity. Without sufficient financial resources, the long-term "expansionary" fiscal policy is difficult to support. Although from the two indicators of 1999, China's national debt burden rate and residents' solvency, the proportion of China's national debt balance to GDP is 12.93% (the internationally recognized security warning line is about 60%), and the proportion of national debt balance to residents' savings balance is 17.60% (the internationally recognized warning line is about 30%). However, judging from the repayment rate of national debt, the proportion of debt service in China's 1999 fiscal revenue reaches 16.8% (the internationally recognized security warning line is about 10%), which has greatly exceeded the internationally recognized security warning line. From the perspective of debt dependence, this indicator has increased year by year and remains high. The dependence on national debt is 1999, reaching 30.6% (the internationally recognized security warning line is about 20%), while the dependence on central debt is as high as 98% (the internationally recognized security warning line is about 30%), both of which are far higher than the internationally recognized control standards. Since 1998, the whole national finance has spent14, and the central finance has spent12 through the issuance of national debt, which fully shows the fragility of China's finance and will certainly cause great potential risks to China's future financial security. Although China's current national debt burden rate and residents' solvency are far from the international warning line, in fact, China's financial debt is not comparable to that of mature market economy countries. Because western financial debt is generally equal to public sector debt, while China's financial debt is generally less than public sector debt. The reasons for this difference mainly come from the following three projects: first, the quasi-national debt project; Second, the potential loss of non-performing assets in the state-owned banking system; The third is the hidden pension debt. Obviously, if we simply calculate the national financial debt without considering the above three items, it will naturally underestimate the scale of government debt; On the other hand, if the above three items are included, the debt scale of the public sector will increase greatly. In China, due to the social nature, government finance is the actual ultimate undertaker of all public sector debts, so the scale of public sector debts in China is much higher than that of financial debts. According to some scholars' estimation, the actual debt of China's public sector in 1999 has exceeded 50% of GDP in that year, which has approached or even exceeded the internationally recognized warning line.

Secondly, the result of implementing the "expansionary" fiscal policy is to increase the fiscal deficit. The fiscal deficit is not only an economic issue, but also a political issue. Theoretically, as long as the economy continues to grow, people's living standards continue to improve, and the public maintains good confidence, a certain scale of fiscal deficit (the resulting size of national debt) is tolerable, which will not lead to any financial risks, that is, as the deficit and debt continue to increase, the government will not be able to make up for the deficit with its fiscal balance in the future, nor will it be able to borrow new debts for old debts and make up for the deficit, and it will not receive strong international assistance. Then, the government has only two choices: one is to issue more money; The second is to announce the cancellation of old debts. The former means hyperinflation, and the latter means the bankruptcy of national credit, both of which mean the collapse of economy or regime. In my opinion, due to the implementation of the proactive fiscal policy, the problems that should have been exposed during the depression, such as economic structure, unbalanced regional development, income gap, and non-performing assets of banks, have been temporarily concealed under the stimulus of fiscal deficit on economic growth. Once the fiscal deficit policy weakens the stimulating effect on economic growth, these problems will be exposed again and form obstacles to economic growth, which should be paid enough attention to.

Third, the government's debt financing also needs to pay the cost. As far as government debt is concerned, its cost is debt interest. Generally speaking, the cost of debt financing is inversely proportional to the credibility of the government. However, even a government with a high reputation cannot borrow at home and abroad indefinitely at low interest rates. In general, the credit rating of a highly indebted government changes in the opposite direction to its debt scale, while the debt risk of the government increases with the expansion of debt scale and the decline of credit rating. For example, this is the reason why the Russian financial crisis broke out.

Finally, the implementation of "expansionary" fiscal policy ultimately depends on the operation of government agencies and is combined with administrative actions. In the process of implementation, it is bound to have a strong administrative color, which will easily lead to the return of planned economic system and weaken the basic role and efficiency of market mechanism in allocating resources. As China's current property rights reform has not really been put in place and a truly effective legal person property subject has not been established, it is impossible to fundamentally change the situation of many investment decisions, low efficiency and poor benefits in the implementation of "expansionary" fiscal policies. Coupled with the lack of effective supervision and restraint mechanism, it is impossible to fundamentally reverse the phenomenon of corruption, misappropriation, crowding out and massive loss of public investment, which is bound to seriously affect the actual effect of fiscal expenditure.

At present, in China's transitional economy, aggregate contradiction and structural contradiction are intertwined and accompanied, so it is difficult to solve the problem of insufficient effective demand by adopting a simple aggregate expansion policy. Japan began to adopt expansionary fiscal and monetary policies in the late 1980s, but its economy never started. The key lies in Japan's failure to effectively combine structural adjustment policies with aggregate expansion policies to form new economic growth points. Therefore, under the current circumstances, we can't blindly rely on expanding the fiscal deficit and issuing government bonds on a large scale to stimulate economic growth. The increase of fiscal expenditure must be based on the reliable growth of fiscal revenue, while paying attention to solving the following problems:

First of all, the improvement of active fiscal policy should start with changing the way of government investment. The focus of active fiscal policy should shift from direct means of financial investment to indirect means such as financial investment and financing and financial discount. To make government investment a lever and effectively promote social investment. Specifically, it includes: (1) changing the mode of financial investment and financing, gradually establishing a financial investment and financing system suitable for China's national conditions, and solving the contradiction between financial investment demand and investment supply from the system. (2) Take various measures to absorb social funds. The use of financial interest subsidies, financial shares, financial guarantees and other means to absorb social funds, especially private enterprises to participate in social infrastructure, high-tech industries and real estate development, thus producing the effect of "four changes to two." It is worth further pointing out that the growth of private investment plays an important role in economic development. In recent years, driven by the proactive fiscal policy, the investment in fixed assets of the whole society has grown rapidly, but if the growth of private investment is slow, it will affect the basic role of the market in resource allocation. Therefore, in addition to implementing a proactive fiscal policy, we should also fully implement policies to guide the expansion of private investment, such as implementing access policies, lowering access thresholds, effectively implementing national treatment in taxation, and preventing unfair tax burden and repeated taxation. It is necessary to strengthen financial support, broaden direct and indirect financing channels for small and medium-sized enterprises, and strengthen legal protection and service institutions.

Second, use public expenditure policy to stimulate domestic demand growth. According to China's current actual situation, we should make full use of favorable conditions and appropriately increase some public expenditures, which are mainly used for projects with low investment risk and both economic and social benefits, such as infrastructure construction and environmental governance. This will not only improve the environmental conditions for economic development, to some extent, eliminate the unfavorable factors that have restricted economic growth for a long time, but also help to create more employment opportunities, ease the employment pressure and increase the consumption of urban and rural residents.

Third, adjust the income distribution relationship and start final consumption. In this regard, the first is to adjust the income level of personnel within the system, take the wage level outside the domestic system of countries similar to China's development stage as the reference system, and combine the monetization policy of China's social security system to adjust the wages of personnel within the system. Second, through reform, conscientiously implement the policy of reducing the burden on enterprises and farmers, and create favorable conditions for improving the income level and purchasing power of workers and farmers. Third, appropriately increase the proportion of transfer expenditures, increase the support of the state finance for the establishment and improvement of the social security system, and formulate counter-cyclical operations for reforms that require financial support, such as housing, medical care, education, and employment. Efforts should be made to reduce the burden of reform costs in residents' expenditure and stabilize residents' expenditure expectations.

Fourth, we should pay full attention to the timely adjustment and gradual transformation of policies. Mainly through market and consumption substitution, private and enterprise investment substitution and export demand substitution, it creates conditions for the gradual "fading out" and transformation of the active fiscal policy. At the same time, it is also necessary to strengthen the fiscal policy to guide structural adjustment, enhance the stamina of economic development, and form a set of innovative mechanisms to promote industrial adjustment and continuous upgrading; Establish a standardized inter-governmental transfer payment system, improve the macro-control ability of the central government, and create conditions for promoting the coordinated development of regional economy; Optimizing the tax structure and standardizing the relationship between taxes and fees will enable the tax system itself to effectively regulate the economic boom and at the same time enhance the government's regulatory capacity.