Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations and Military Spending in China, 1980-2013

摘要

Based on quantitative and normative analyses, this article finds that China's military budget in the post-Mao era benefits from the central government's advantageous position in national revenue distribution under the 1994 tax-sharing scheme. Memoirs of political and military elites have shown that military needs were actually a major concern for the launch of tax reform, which subsequently facilitated changes in the fund allotment of the People's Liberation Army from Deng Xiaoping's "military shall endure" (jundui yao rennai) approach, to "self-improving, self-developing" (ziwo wanshan ziwo fazhan) commercialisation, and to Jiang Zemin's "eating imperial grain" (chi huangliang) reform.