Liu Jianwen: Yes, like its internal affairs. But now nearly two decades have passed. In particular, since we brought up the idea of public finance in 1998, people have been debating what problems the Budget Law should solve. Is it a law that regulates the government's internal affairs? Or is it a law that disciplines the government's behaviors? Now there has been a general agreement that the core of the issue should be about establishing a law that does the latter.

如果说一个国家的预算看上去复杂而且专业性强，我们何不以一个小型机构作为国家的缩影，看看它怎样制定预算？我探访了刘国特，他是北京郊区一家小型出版公司的经理，大约有30名雇员。他告诉我他的公司都需要做哪些种类的预算。

Since a country's budget might often look quite complex and technical, why don't we look at how a much smaller organization makes its budget as a miniature of the big issue? I visited Liu Guote, an owner of a small publishing house in Beijing's suburbs. His company has about 30 employees, and he tells me what types of budgets his company has to make.

刘国特：其实我们做预算的目的，简单点说就是算一下今年准备投入多少钱，到年底我们的收益是多少钱。预算现在我们列为第一项最重要的就是员工工资，其次就是我们一些销售的预算成本，包括我们的发行人员出差的差旅费，包括日常运转费用。我们要计算一些原材料的成本，包括纸张的，印刷的书款，设计等等。

Liu Guote: The purpose of our budgeting, to put it simply, is to estimate how much money we are going to invest this year and how much profit we will get by the end of the year. The most important item in our budgeting is employees' wages. And then, it's our costs of sales, like employees' business trips and other expenditures. We also need to calculate our production costs, like paper, printing, design and so on.

Apart from these regular items, Liu also has some unexpected expenses, like the huge flood that poured into Beijing on July 21.

除了这些开支以外，刘国特还有一些意想不到的开支，比如刚刚经历的北京7.21特大洪水。

刘国特：现在还能闻到一股这里的霉味儿，现在那些被泡的就已经全部是废品了。卖了五十多块钱吧。

Liu Guote: We can still smell the mustiness here. Those soaked books are all ruined now. They were recycled for 50 yuan.

冯欣：一共就五十多块钱？

Feng Xin: Only 50 yuan?

刘国特：按照成本算的话是十万块钱吧。

Liu Guote: Yes. They actually cost 100,000 yuan.

And there is more…

刘国特还有更多的开销。

刘国特：接待基本就是餐饮费用，甚至到北京周边的旅游费用都在里面，很多成本没法算的。

Liu Guote: We also have hospitality expenses, like dinner or even tours around Beijing. Those were impossible to calculate.

如果我们解构一下刘国特的预算，我们可以发现他公司的收入主要来源于利润，而支出则包括更多类别，比如员工的工资福利、生产成本、市场开发，以及无法意料的自然灾害和接待费用。

If we break down the budget of Liu's company, we can find the income mainly comes from profits. The expenses, on the other hand, cover more categories, such as employees' wages and benefits, production costs, market research and development, as well as unexpected disaster relief and hospitality expenses.

于一个国家来说也是同样的道理，中国于1994年通过了《预算法》。根据媒体报道，立法者早在2004年就开始修订这部法律了，但是直到2011年12月才进行了一审，2012年6月进行了二审。根据国家统计局的数据，1994年，中国的财政收入为5210多亿元，到2011年，财政收入已达到10万亿，比94年增长了19倍。

Similar principles apply to a country. China passed its Budget Law in 1994. According to various media reports, lawmakers started amending the law in 2004, but the first hearing of the draft amendment didn't take place until December 2011, and second hearing this June. According to China's National Bureau of Statistics, the country's total revenue reached 521 billion yuan ($82 billion) in 1994. By 2011, it had gone up to 10 trillion yuan ($1.58 trillion), more than 19 times what it was in 1994.

现行的《预算法》将中国的预算系统分成两种：中央政府和地方政府。两者都是主要从四种渠道获得收入：第一，各项税收收入；第二，政府性基金，比如发行彩票、出让土地的收入，以及各种收费；第三，国有资本经营，指政府通过占有和利用自然资源、修建铁路、电站等方式获得的收入；第四，社会保险基金，指政府通过投资社会保险基金获得的收益。

The current Budget Law divides the country's budget system into two sorts: the central government and local governments. Both types of governments mainly make money through four sources: First, revenue generated through various levies; second, government-managed funds, such as lottery sales, the sales of State-owned land-use rights and various fees; third, State capital operations, meaning the government makes money from exploiting natural resources, building railways, power plants and so on; and fourth, money generated from government investments in social security insurance funds.