On December 22, 2025, China’s national legislature, the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), heard the first-ever report on the “recording and review of fiscal and budgetary matters” [财政预算事项备案审查] from its Budgetary Affairs Commission (BAC) [预算工作委员会], a ministerial-level professional body that supports legislative oversight over public finances, including budgets, state-owned assets, and government debt.
Regular readers may be more familiar with “recording and review” (R&R) [备案审查] as the NPCSC’s mechanism for overseeing the legislative rules issued by major central and local state institutions—or the “legislative R&R” process. But the legislature also receives numerous other filings, many of which concern budgetary matters and tax policy. Under the Budget Law [预算法], the State Council must annually file consolidated local budgets and final accounts with the NPCSC and submit specific rules governing the central government’s transfer payments to localities (see arts. 23, 29). Other statutory authorities impose filing obligations as well. For example, while all tax statutes authorize the State Council to adopt tax incentives, they also require it to file those incentives with the NPCSC.
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