Abstract: Financial transparency is an important symbol of the modernization of national governance system and governance capacity. How does the new Budget Law, which has been implemented since 2015 as a top-down system reform, affect the transparency of local finance is a major issue worthy of study. By making use of the panel data of 31 provinces in China from 2012 to 2017, this paper studies the impact of the implementation of the new Budget Law on local fiscal transparency. The findings show that the implementation of the new Budget Law has effectively improved the local fiscal transparency. Compared with coastal provinces, the implementation of the new Budget Law in inland provinces can improve local fiscal transparency more significantly. During the process of improving the local fiscal transparency, the implementation of the new Budget Law from the top to the bottom and the social and public demand from the bottom to the top have not produced any synergistic effect. Therefore, the new Regulations for the Implementation of the Budget Law should be revised and promulgated as soon as possible, the legal system for the disclosure of fiscal information should be improved, and the government should continue to strengthen the active disclosure of financial information and improve the mechanism of public participation in the disclosure of financial information continuously in accordance with the requirements of the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity.

Key words: national governance, the new Budget Law, fiscal transparency of local governments, fiscal information, social and public demands