‘If You Can't Budget, How Can You Govern?’—A study of China's state capacity

State capacity matters. Using China as a case study, this essay contends that the capacity to budget is a general underpinning of state capacity regardless of how it is defined. For a state like China to enhance its capacity to budget, it must first concentrate on the issue of institutionalizing the basic controlling systems. Until this has been achieved, a move towards a more advanced budgetary system is unlikely to be successful.