As the main policy tools used by the government to achieve economic goals, fiscal policy and monetary policy are the two most powerful economic means for countries to adjust the total social supply and demand in a commodity economy society. They play a key role in coordinating social aggregate and structural balance and become the leading policies of various macroeconomic policies under the socialist market economy system. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the theoretical basis of the coordination between fiscal policy and monetary policy, scientifically define the objectives and ways of the coordination between the two policies, effectively improve the position of fiscal policy and monetary policy in the macro-control system and achieve the coordination and cooperation between fiscal policy and monetary policy on a deep and high-level basis.
First, the theoretical basis for the coordination of fiscal policy and monetary policy
The coordination of fiscal policy and monetary policy is based on their mutual relationship, which is the combination of Marxist social reproduction theory and socialist market economic system.
1. Marx's social reproduction theory on the relationship between production, distribution, exchange and consumption is an important theoretical basis for studying the coordination between fiscal policy and monetary policy. Production performance is the starting point, consumption performance is the end point, and distribution and exchange performance are the intermediate links. This is Marx's incisive conclusion in the Introduction to Criticism of Political Economy. As the intermediary between production and consumption, distribution and exchange are the basic guarantee for the balanced development of production and consumption. If there is a problem in the distribution and exchange of social reproduction, and then it is difficult to effectively connect the distribution ratio with the consumption demand, or because the products are marketable, it is impossible to provide enough monetary funds to meet the needs of circulation expansion, and some social products are difficult to smoothly enter the consumption link, delaying the turnover time of the total social products in the process of reproduction, resulting in serious problems that simple social reproduction cannot continue and expanded reproduction cannot be realized. Therefore, it is particularly important to effectively regulate and manage various contradictions in the distribution and circulation of social products, including structural contradictions and total balance contradictions. Fiscal policy and monetary policy, as the main policy control means used by the government in the field of distribution and circulation, have played an important role in overcoming various contradictions in the field of distribution and circulation and making social reproduction proceed smoothly on an expanded scale. At the same time, because fiscal policy and monetary policy act on two different links of social reproduction, and are limited to the adjustment of a single policy means, there are considerable limitations, so the cooperation of the two policies is indispensable for accelerating and promoting the smooth operation of social reproduction.
2. The coordination of fiscal policy and monetary policy in the process of income distribution and resource allocation is the basic guarantee for better balance between efficiency and fairness under the conditions of socialist market economy. Fiscal policy and monetary policy have their own emphasis on coordinating the contradiction between fairness and efficiency, and their coordination effect is reflected in: monetary policy emphasizes efficiency first. China is in the primary stage of socialism. To liberate and develop productive forces, we must first give full play to the basic regulatory role of market mechanism in resource allocation. Make economic activities follow the law of value and adapt to the changes of supply and demand: monetary policy mainly grasps the circulation field and participates in the accumulation of fixed assets and current assets, which is an important lever to restrict and regulate redistribution activities, while commercial banks pay attention to the consideration of credit investment from the profit target, requiring that the adjustment of credit structure and interest rate by monetary policy can basically reflect the changes of market supply and demand, thus guiding funds to flow to areas with good benefits and promoting the improvement of production efficiency; Fiscal policy pays attention to fair distribution. The market economy itself is a competitive economy and an efficient economy. The result of competition will inevitably lead to the efficiency difference between market competitors, which is not only manifested among individuals, but also between industries and regions. Reasonable efficiency and income gap are the driving force to improve efficiency, while too wide efficiency and income gap will intensify contradictions and be an important reason for social instability. Fiscal policy is the leading link that affects and restricts the distribution of total social products and national income. With its adjustment strength and breadth, it is entirely possible to establish an income distribution mechanism to adjust the differences in economic interests and prevent excessive differences, that is, to limit the excessive concentration and excessive growth of income distribution by means of taxation and social security, appropriately narrow the income gap among individuals, industries and regions, prevent polarization and ensure social stability. Only when fiscal policy and monetary policy cooperate with each other, on the premise of optimizing resource allocation and ensuring social efficiency, can we promote stable economic growth by adjusting income gap and ensuring moderate and fair income distribution.
3. The coordination of fiscal policy and monetary policy is an indispensable tool to adjust the total supply and demand and structure of society under the condition of socialist market economy. The coordination between fiscal policy and monetary policy in the process of adjusting the total supply and demand and structure of society is reflected in different ways and effects: fiscal policy directly affects the social and economic structure and indirectly affects the balance of total supply and demand; However, monetary policy directly affects the total balance of supply and demand and indirectly affects the social and economic structure. From the perspective of fiscal policy adjustment, the fiscal adjustment of total supply is first reflected in the adjustment of social and economic structure, such as fiscal use of necessary tax preferential policies, fiscal discount policies and fiscal investment policies to support the adjustment of industrial structure, support the development of "bottleneck" industries, and effectively increase the supply of short products; The fiscal adjustment of total demand is mainly through expanding or reducing the scale of fiscal expenditure, taking structural adjustment as the premise, so as to achieve the purpose of stimulating and restraining social total demand. The adjustment of monetary policy to the total social demand is mainly to control the amount of base money through the central bank's money supply and refinancing, and to control the money multiplier through the deposit reserve ratio and rediscount interest rate, so as to effectively control the total social demand and achieve the purpose of currency and price stability; At the same time, on the basis of regulating the total social demand, the central bank will also play a certain role in regulating the social and economic structure. For example, banks choose the direction of lending according to industrial policies and market profitability, including the differential treatment of credit scale between industries and regions, which objectively plays a role in regulating social economy. It can be seen that the adjustment of monetary policy to the total social supply and demand is direct, while the adjustment to the social and economic structure is indirect. Therefore, it is direct to demand closer coordination and adjustment between fiscal policy and monetary policy, but indirect to guide the adjustment of social and economic structure. Therefore, fiscal policy and monetary policy are required to cooperate more closely, foster strengths and avoid weaknesses, accelerate the adjustment and rational distribution of social supply and demand structure on the premise of realizing the total balance of social supply and demand, and fully promote the comprehensive, coordinated and stable development of social economy.
Second, the situation analysis of the coordination of China's fiscal policy and monetary policy at this stage
Over the years, according to the principles of Marxism-Leninism and China's national conditions, China has made useful explorations in the specific coordination of fiscal policy and monetary policy, and achieved remarkable results, but there are still many contradictions to be solved.
(A) the main results of moderately tight fiscal and monetary policies
China's economic operation, from 1992 began to implement a moderately tight fiscal and monetary policy, and successfully achieved a "soft landing" in 1997. Since then, China has further persisted in reform and opening up and intensified structural adjustment. At present, the whole national economy shows a good trend of effective macro-control and obvious improvement of marketization. Specific performance in the following aspects:
1. Vigorously increase fiscal revenue, gradually increase the "two proportions" of fiscal revenue, and enhance the overall strength of the government to stabilize the economy. Increasing fiscal revenue and reducing fiscal expenditure are the main measures to tighten fiscal policy. Since the reform and opening up, the growth rate of fiscal revenue has been lower than that of expenditure; From 1992, the growth of fiscal revenue gradually leads the growth of fiscal expenditure (except 1994); From 65438 to 0997, the proportion of fiscal revenue to GDP reached about 1 1.5%, and the proportion of central fiscal revenue to total fiscal revenue reached about 48%, gradually approaching the target proportion of revitalizing finance.
2. Strictly control currency issuance, control the scale of credit, and adjust interest rates in a timely manner. Controlling currency circulation is the core content of tightening monetary policy. From 1993 to 1998, the central bank strengthened the control of currency issuance to keep the money supply within the planned target range. At the same time, in order to rectify the financial order and control the growth level of credit scale, the central bank raised the inventory interest rate twice on 1993, and made great achievements by using financial policies to curb economic overheating; Then the central bank cut interest rates twice at 1996 and several times at 1997 according to the specific situation, effectively ensuring that the monetary policy regulation is "moderate" on the basis of "tightening".
3. Adjust the structure of fiscal expenditure, strengthen the management of fixed assets investment, and optimize the investment structure of fixed assets. The expansion of investment scale is an important reason for the overheating of China economy in the early stage. Since the second half of 1993, the central government has strengthened the management measures for investment in fixed assets, stopped and postponed the construction of some capital construction projects, which reduced the growth rate of investment scale from 58.6% in 1993 to 17.5% in/995, and successfully guided funds. Another prominent crux of fiscal expenditure is the rapid expansion of administrative institutions. In 1980, the national administrative expenditure was 6.68 billion yuan, and in104100 billion yuan in 1996, an increase of 14.5 times, while the financial expenditure only increased by 5. Five times in the same period. More than 60%-70% of the financial expenditure is used to "support people", which not only squeezes the funds for career development and leads to the shortage of construction funds, but also becomes a heavy financial burden, widening the gap between income and expenditure until it affects the overall stability. To this end, governments at all levels have reduced administrative expenses by 20%-30% in combination with streamlining institutions and changing functions; Implement a unified government procurement system, use market means to manage government material procurement expenditures, and implement measures such as managing administrative funds at the next level to save expenditures and stop extravagance and waste.
After several years of macro-control, the moderately tight fiscal policy and monetary policy have achieved great results, which not only effectively controlled inflation, but also kept the national economy growing at a high speed and the national economic strength was continuously enhanced. At the same time, the economic oscillation amplitude is very small, basically achieving the goal of "soft landing" of the economy.
(B) the current macroeconomic problems
1. State-owned enterprises are facing more and more difficulties and are struggling. Macro-control in recent years has not alleviated the original difficulties of state-owned enterprises. On the contrary, the operating conditions of state-owned enterprises, as the main body of microeconomics, have deteriorated, their benefits have declined seriously and their losses have increased substantially. The old problems such as high debt of state-owned enterprises, heavy social burden and insufficient long-term technological transformation have not been alleviated, and the proportion of state-owned economy in the whole national economy has been declining. By 1995, the loss of state-owned enterprises reached 43.7%, with a loss of 37.79 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20% and a year-on-year decrease in profits of 10%. At present, the losses continue to expand. At the same time, the operating rate of enterprises is insufficient, the number of enterprises that have stopped production or stopped production has increased, a large number of employees of enterprises have been laid off and unemployed, and the market lacks vitality; On the other hand, the asset-liability ratio of enterprises has exceeded the safety warning line, and high-debt operation makes enterprises become "wage earners" of banks, sharing life and death. It can be said that the operating conditions of state-owned enterprises in recent years are quite severe.
2. The current fiscal and monetary policies have little influence on structural adjustment. Although the moderately tight fiscal and monetary policy is effective in controlling the total amount, it has not fundamentally solved the structural contradictions. One of the important aspects is the unreasonable industrial structure, low level and serious regional industrial convergence. It is estimated that the similarity coefficient of industrial structure in Beijing is 0.9, and that in Shanxi is 0.92, which reflects that the product sales are wrong and the backlog is serious in real economic life. At the same time, the investment in key projects of basic industries and infrastructure in the national economy, especially the most important and basic agricultural investment, has increased, but the development speed is still slower than that of the whole national economy, and its weak position in the national economy has not changed, and the "bottleneck" still restricts economic development to varying degrees.
3. The negative inflation rate indicates that the total demand is insufficient, and the 8% growth target of 1998 is under great pressure. Since the reform and opening up 20 years ago, China's economy has been plagued by serious inflation for many times, and it has become an economic hotspot of national concern. Since 1993 strengthened macro-control, the inflation index has continued to fall, and the retail price only rose by 0.8% in 1997, and it was negative by the end of 1997. Retail this year1-February. When the inflation index is negative, it means that the deposits in the bank and the money in hand will automatically increase in value without labor. However, this is not entirely a good thing for the whole national economy, and the negative impact exceeds the positive impact. The equilibrium result of total supply and total demand determines the rise and fall of price level. The price level has dropped from 65438 to 0997, which fully shows that the total demand, especially the investment, is seriously insufficient, which leads to the depression of the whole market through the multiplier effect, showing the sequelae of overheating. At the same time, the 12th National People's Congress put forward the realistic goal of steady and sustained economic growth of 8% this year, but as of June 1998, the growth rate was 7.8% in the first quarter and only 7% in the second quarter, which was far from the established goal. The policy of economic growth and the recent shortage of total demand have put great pressure on the 8% growth target in the national economic period.
(C) the difficulties faced by fiscal and monetary policy regulation and the deep-seated contradictions of coordination and cooperation
Through the appearance of the above problems, we can easily see the deep-seated contradiction between fiscal policy and monetary policy coordination.
1. The "dilemma" of the national economy restricts fiscal and monetary policies. One is the difficult financial situation. The main contents of fiscal policy are income policy and expenditure policy, and the goal of fiscal policy is achieved by changing the scale and structure of fiscal revenue and expenditure. Therefore, whether the government has the ability to change the scale structure of fiscal revenue and expenditure is the premise and important guarantee for effectively realizing fiscal macro-control policies. However, this condition is still very weak in China. First of all, from the perspective of fiscal revenue, since the reform and opening up, the distribution pattern of national income has undergone major changes, and the proportion of fiscal revenue in national income has decreased year by year. From 1980 to 1995, GDP increased by 10.86%, with an average annual growth of17.9%; Fiscal revenue only increased by 4.46% times, with an average annual growth of 1 1.98%. Before 1993, the growth of fiscal revenue was slow, and the proportion of fiscal revenue in GDP dropped from 28.4% in 1979 to 10.7% in 1995. Since 1993, the fiscal revenue has increased by about 90 billion per year, but the increase includes the factors of rising prices. The actual growth is very limited. This reflects that the proportion of fiscal revenue in national income is obviously declining, and the decline of financial resources directly affects the macro-control of finance. Secondly, from the aspect of expenditure, fiscal expenditure grows faster than fiscal revenue, fiscal expenditure is rigid, administrative expenditure and various business expenditures maintain rapid growth, and the deficit scale is increasing. From 1980 to 1995, the fiscal deficit rose from 6.89 billion yuan to 66.68 billion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of 16.34%, far exceeding the average annual growth rate of fiscal revenue 1 1.98%. In order to make up for the huge deficit, the finance was forced to borrow heavily. At present, more than 1/2 of the central financial expenditure is maintained by borrowing. The domestic debt of the central government increased from 187 billion yuan in 1990 to153.7 billion yuan in 1995. The dependence on domestic debt rose from 14% in 1990 to 210.3% in 1995, which has exceeded the internationally recognized level of 20%. It is predicted that at this rate, by the year 2000, the annual national debt will reach 800 billion yuan. The inevitable consequence of this situation is that the role of fiscal policy is weakened, and the expected regulatory strength and effect are difficult to achieve. 1995, the influence of finance on fixed assets investment decreased from 77.6% in 1978 to 2.6%. Affected by financial difficulties, the funds that should be supplemented in the production and operation of state-owned enterprises have not been supplemented for a long time; It is difficult for national policy banks to get funds in place and the sources of funds are seriously insufficient, forcing policy banks to intervene in commercial business. In short, finance has basically fallen into a situation where it can only protect grain and is unable to regulate it. At the same time, the limited financial resources are seriously dispersed, and the proportion of central fiscal revenue to total fiscal revenue is decreasing year by year. In the central fiscal revenue, the share of financial resources fixed in the hands of various departments is also large, which seriously restricts the central fiscal regulation and control ability.
The second is that the financial situation is not optimistic. The main problems are the decline of bank operating efficiency, outstanding debt problem and deterioration of asset quality, which puts great pressure on the implementation of moderately tight monetary policy. From 65438 to 0994, the average return on assets of the four major state-owned commercial banks was 0.32%; During the period of 1995, the losses of grass-roots banks increased, especially in backward areas, resulting in losses of three of the four major banks. An important reason for the deterioration of the bank's operating conditions is the heavy burden of non-performing assets. At the end of 1994, non-performing loans of financial institutions in China accounted for 19.7% of all loans, of which more than 90% were concentrated in the four major state-owned commercial banks. At the same time, it is worth noting that the interest receivable by banks has been on the rise in recent years, which shows that there are still a considerable number of non-performing assets lurking in normal loans. If the interest converted into principal and accrued losses are taken into account, the proportion of real non-performing assets will be even greater. Since residents' savings account for 70% of the sources of social funds, banks bear the responsibility and risk of transforming savings into investment. Under the current operating situation, the bank's credit investment has not formed corresponding benefits, which will inevitably lead to the low-quality growth of credit assets. If left unchecked, the contradiction between residents' creditor's rights and corporate debts will be exposed, which will have an inestimable impact on the whole financial situation. Moreover, the increasing non-performing assets of banks will also affect the current monetary policy: commercial banks are both the goal and the transmitter of monetary policy, and usually adjust their assets and liabilities according to the change of monetary policy and the principle of maximizing interests, thus ultimately affecting the economic behavior of enterprises and the public and achieving the purpose of monetary policy regulation; The condition for adjusting their own operations is the liquidity of assets and liabilities. However, according to relevant estimates, less than 30% of the assets actually transferred by the four major state-owned commercial banks. All this means that there is a potential crisis in the bank. This situation also puts the central bank in a dilemma when formulating and implementing monetary policy.