Abstract: In recent years, many big public crises happened frequently in China, which have seriously affected the life and property safety of the people and the sustainable development of the society and economy. The difficulty in the prevention and treatment of the public crisis should be attributed to the opportunism of the local finance, and the popularity of the latter was derided from the irrational incentive and restraint mechanism between the governments and the imperfect fiscal management system. In reality, the opportunism of the local finance not only leads to the formation of public crisis, but also increases the difficulty of governance of public crisis and magnifies the negative influence of the public crisis on the operation of society and economy. Therefore, it is necessary for China to reconstruct the local fiscal operation mechanism, establish an effective incentive and restraint mechanism, properly define the responsibilities of prevention and treatment of public crisis between the governments, allocate sufficient revenue to the local governments, and establish perfect local fiscal supervision mechanism.

Key words: public crisis; local government; fiscal opportunism; fiscal operation mechanism