The Budget Law was promulgated in 1994 and amended in 2014 and 2018 respectively. The latest revision entered into force on December 29, 2018.

There are 63 articles in total.

The key points are as follows:

1.The State shall establish a budget at each of the five levels of government: the Central Government; provinces, autonomous regions and centrally-administered municipalities; cities divided into districts and autonomous prefectures; counties, autonomous counties, cities not divided into districts, and municipal districts; townships, ethnic townships and towns.(Article 3)

2.A budget includes the general public budget, government fund budget, state-owned capital operating budget and social insurance fund budget.(Article 5)

3.The state shall apply a tax-sharing system to the Central and local governments and a financial transfer payment system.(Article 15 and 16)

4.Financial transfer payments include the transfer payments made by the Central Government to the local governments and the transfer payments made by the local governments at higher levels to the local governments at lower levels for balancing the basic financial strengths of regions.(Article 16)

5.The National People’s Congress shall review the draft central and local budgets and the reports on the implementation of the central and local budgets. A local people’s congress at or above the county level shall review the draft general budget at the same level and the report on the implementation of the general budget. (Article 20 and 21)

6.The budgets of the local governments at various levels shall be prepared under the principle of “deciding expenditure based on revenues and maintaining a balance between revenues and expenditure,” and shall not include any deficit except as otherwise provided for by this Law.(Article 35)