Research On The Government Debt Accounting Under The Guidance Of The Four-dimensional Function

Government debt accounting,as the pre-warning system for financial management,plays an indispensable role in strengthening the debt budget control,enhancing the performance of using debt capital or intensifying the risk-resistance capacity.To effectively supervise the government debt accounting,the relevant research mainly focuses on the selection of accounting basis,measurement attribution and reporting form.However,the practicability of focused research hinges on the following three assumptions: to specify the governmental responsibility under certain circumstances;to adjust timely according to the change of the governmental responsibilities and such adjustment shall be made consistent with the governmental accounting system.Under the influence of the extensive management mode of the planned economic system,China has established a budget accounting-like system that takes financial capital movement as the measurement objective instead of an authentic government accounting system,which may impact the molding of the government debt accounting framework.Therefore,this paper provides a research on the internal relationship between the public fiduciary duty,accounting environment,accounting system and the government debt accounting so as to find out a system that conforms to the fiscal management regime in China under the certain circumstances of world financial crisis;on the basis of which,it also aims at perfecting the recognition,measurement and disclosure of the government debt,thus laying a theoretic basis for the establishment of a dual-track government accounting system.Taking the public fiduciary duty as the starting point and the governmental accounting environment as the background,this paper has conducted research on the feasibility of the reform and establishment of the government debt accounting and sets up a government debt accounting reform mode from the aspect of ‘control fuction',‘management function',‘strategy function' and ‘report function' on the basis of profoundly analyzing the stakeholders'(the formulators of accounting regulations and the users of accounting information)demands for and attitudes towards the reform of government debt accounting.This paper is divided into 8 chapters.The first chapter is the Introduction,which mainly states the background and significance,define the important concepts of government debt and government debt accounting,expounds on the domestic andinternational literature and explains the innovations of the framework of this paper.The second chapter probes into the public fiduciary duty and government debt accounting.It begins with the explanation of the behavior perspective and report perspective of the public fiduciary duty.Then it reviews the behavioral compliance duty,behavioral performance duty,behavioral strategy duty and the report duty aiming at giving account of the behavioral process and results in the public fiduciary duty from the four theoretical angles of budget management,performance management,risk management and public choices.Finally,it systematically analyzes the combination of government debt accounting and these four duties and comes to the conclusion that different public difuciary duties have their own emphasis on the demand generated from the government debt accounting(supervise the compliance of the debt budget control,reflect the debt condition and management performance,attach importance to debt risk prevention and control and increase the debt transparency).Different responsibility demand will inevitably result in the functional segmentation in government debt accounting,thus forming the four accounting functions,namely,control,management,strategy and resport.In the third chapter,the current status of the government debt accounting and its feasibility of improvement are discussed.According to the issues existing in the curren government debt accounting in China,this chapter investigates the environmental agent(favorable factors and obstructive factors)for the reform of government debt accounting through questionnaire,the demands of the two interest groups for debt information and the attitudes towards the introduction of reform contents,such as accrual basis as well as the selction of reform approach.The results show that as the government debt accounting has become an inevitable trend,the stakeholders,out of their demands for budget control,performance evaluation and risk prevention and control,have raised higher demands for the quality and disclosure of debt information.Under such circumstances,the progressive reform mode that is led by central government and innovated by local government has been preferred by most of the stakeholders.The fourth chapter includes the establishment ideas of four-dimension-oriented government debt accounting.On the basis of the systematic analysis of the design ideas of the government accounting system in China,this chapter tries to set up a dual-track government accounting system that is composed of budget accounting,financial accounting and management accounting and propose the thoughts for the reform of the government debt accounting in China,a framework that encompasses the control-oriented debt accounting,management-oriented debt accounting,strategicdebt accounting and government debt accounting report.The fifth chapter refers to the establishment of the control-oriented debt accounting.The budget management is believed as the core of financial management with the record of debt budget information taken as the priority of government debt accounting.This chapter firstly analyzes the current status and problem of the debt budget management in China and then illustrates the special demands of the debt budget management for government debt accounting.By drawing upon the relevant research of expenditure cycle,it explicitly discusses about the accountability and accounting method of the debt budgetary revenues and expenditures at the four stages of raising,usage,collection and payment through taking capital debt within budget as accounting objective,‘commitment system + cash basis' as accounting basis and ‘debt budget expenditure cycle' and ‘debt budget revenue cycle' as the tracking mainline.The sixth chapter deals with the establishment of management-oriented debt accounting.This chapter,beginning with the explanation of the current status of the debt performance management in China,analyzes the debt performance management's needs for the management-oriented debt accounting from the two aspects of the appraisal of overall governmental debt paying ability and debt expenditure performance.At last,it establishes the management-oriented debt accounting that takes the direct liability as the accounting objective and the modified accrual basis as the foundation.The seventh chapter elaborates the establishment of strategy-oriented debt accounting.The author holds the view that the prospective control-oriented debt accounting,which could provide the predictive information,is only restricted to the debt that has been integrated into the budget management.Although the management-oriented debt accounting has expanded the accounting area to the off-budget debt,the contingency that may incur risks is not encompassed.To fill in the gaps in the risks record of government debt accounting and fully reflect the government debt risk,this chapter analyzes the current status of the management of government debt risks and its demands for accounting information and combines the strategy-oriented debt accounting with the flow of the debt risk management and expound on the standards,estimation method and information disclosure of the contingent liability from the three links of risk identification,risk evaluation and risk control.The eighth chapter refers to the establishment of the government debt accounting reprot.This chapter firstly conducts in-depth analysis of the content and level of the government debt accounting in accordance with the general theory of the government financial report,then introduces the international responsibility theory and advanced experience of thegovernment debt accounting report and finally establishes the system featuring debt budget report,financial condition,management performance report and debt risk management.