Abstract: The Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee proposed to“establish a modern financial system”, which is not to deny the essemtialism of “public finance”, rather, it mirrors a scientific decision made by Chinese government to improve the national organization ability with finance as the core when faced with the future development crisis. However, this also reflects the deficiencies of the public financial theory in such aspects as the definition of the publicity, theory localization and institutional constructions, thus the function of the finance has been restricted. At this stage, we should recognize the economic and ethical attributes of China’s modern finance, and establish the modern financial system from the five aspects, i.e., the macroeconomic regulatory mechanism, the performance appraisal system, the fiscal revenue and expenditure system, the budget system and the fiscal management system.

Key words: modern financial system; public finance; financial management system; financial revenue and expenditure system