Abstract: Chinese-style fiscal decentralization is an important institutional arrangement which affects the economic and social development, as well as an institutional guarantee to achieve sustained healthy economic and social development and long-term peace and stability of the state. Chinese-style fiscal decentralization belongs to a model of unanimously executive-agreed decentralization, and it is a top-down mandatory institutional change led by the central government. Therefore, the political and financial incentives from the top as well as the private incentives from the government officials themselves enable the local governments to have a powerful drive to develop economy; while the missing of“hand voting”and“voting with feet”, the weakness of rule of law, and the yardstick competition pressure lead to behavior variation of local governments, which have generated a lot of adverse effects on economic and social development. The future reforms should set about from the following four aspects: the governance of government officials, the system design, the sovereignty of the people, and the supervise mechanisms, so as to guarantee the sustained economic and social development and stability of the state.

Key words: Chinese-style fiscal decentralization; financial decentralization incentives; growth-oriented incentives; local governments’ behavior variation