【摘 要 题】近代经济史
【英文摘要】Public debt, which had had profound influences on the finance and banking as well as economy of all Chinese governments before 1949, was obviously a very important problem in China' s modem history of economy. Researches into China's external public debt have been started early enough in the academic community that a lot of related scientific achievements have been scored. On the contrary, however, there have been few special or systematic researches regarding the public debt in modem China. So, it is highly necessary to enhance the said researches. The public or internal debt in question means the total amount of money borrowed by all the previous central governments of modem China or by local governments with the approval of the central government, including （1） public bonds issued by the Ministry of Finance, those issued by the Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Communication and the Commission of Construction as well as some other relevant departments of the central government, and （2） government bonds and treasury bonds as well as debtsbased on contracts and agreements. While researches on China's internal debt started as early as the 1930s were far form being perfect, those that have been conducted by contemporary scholars are just oriented towards historical periods and special subjects. So far little has been achieved in terms of comprehensive researches. Scholars failed to pay due attention to the researches during the long period from the founding of new China through the 1980s, in which was published only one monograph entitled Materials Regarding the History of Old China's Public Debt（translated name）compiled by Qian Jiaju. It was not until after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CPC that scholars began to show interest in researches into the history of modem China's internal debt. With the researches deepening, they have tended to reach objective and fair conclusions. For example, Jin Pusen, who made a more active and impartial judgment of the pre-war （1937-1945）10-year policies regarding the internal debt of the then government than ever before. He appraised the policies positively while pinpointing its class limitations. From the 1930s on, certain progress was made in this regard, which provides a good foundation for the further research on this topic. Nevertheless, there have ever since been quite a few problems and weaknesses that deserve attention, mainly including： Firstly, as Wu Jingping pointed out, although the internal debt is part of the contents of all almost textbooks on modem Chinese history and contemporary Chinese history, works on the periodic history of the Republic of China, and other textbooks and monographs on the history of economy, finance, or banking, there is a lack of systematic and special researches except for the above-mentioned book by Qian Jiaju. Secondly, there is a tendency of doing researches out of context. Instead, they should be carried out in the broader context-the then political, economic and financial context-according to the fundamental Marxist principles on productive forces and relations of production, and the economic base and the superstructure. We should, through political and economic criticism, judge the nature and use of the internal debt and find out the different characteristics of modem China's internal debt from those of the capitalist internal debt and socialist China's internal debt. For example, modem China's internal debt contributed to the survival and consolidation of the governments； it was chiefly for a non-productive purpose； it became one of the causes for the lopsided development of the banking industry； and it was known for its bad credit. Thirdly, The research area is limited. We should expand the research area, including not merely the rules on the issuance of government loans but also their uses. In fact, the object of the study of internal debt also includes direct loans, secured loans, etc. Lastly, it is a tough challenge to take in making an analysis of modem China's internal debt by using the contemporary theory on public debt, to serve the purpose of today's economic construction. Since the 1980s, China has taken the application of the policy of public debt as an important measure to speed up modem socialist construction, thus expanding the scope of national debt gradually. Especially after 1998, thanks to its active financial policies, China has maintained the relatively high rate of loaning for successive four years, with the balance of national debt increasing from 777 billion yuan at the end of 1998 to 1870 billion yuan at the end of 2001. With the rapid expansion of government loaning, its risks have kept increasing. In this connection, it is a challenge for both theorists and practitioners to tackle the problem： how to keep an appropriate rate of the increase of national debt and establish a reasonable structure of national debt in order to guard against and eliminate the financial risks.