Abstract: The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee emphasized the need to resolve local government debt risks in an active yet prudent manner. Facing the increasingly complex external environment of the “15th Five-Year Plan” period, local government debt serves not only as a source of fiscal pressure but also as a mechanism for intertemporal adjustment to absorb shocks. Adopting a resilience perspective helps explain the underlying mechanisms that allow local debt management to maintain critical functions under stress. Since the launch of reform and opening-up, local government debt management has evolved from spontaneous adaptation to institutionalized regulation, forming a closed-loop operational cycle—comprising risk triggering, centralization, absorption, and experience accumulation—that exhibits inherent resilience; this resilience is characterized by the ability to seamlessly transition between risk identification, resource coordination, stress mitigation, and rule updating, thereby offering a new analytical lens on the evolution of central-local fiscal relations. However, issues persist in some localities, such as a lag between risk triggering and cash-flow pressure, a lack of procedural rigor in coordination and centralization mechanisms, unclear sequencing in the use of risk-absorption tools, and insufficient accumulation of experience; furthermore, management objectives are sometimes narrowly interpreted as mere control over debt volume. Future efforts should shift from simple scale reduction toward stabilizing critical functions and ensuring adaptive adjustments. By proactively addressing risks, coordinating and centralizing management across administrative levels, absorbing risks through structured approaches, and continuously evolving institutional frameworks, a long-term government debt management mechanism compatible with high-quality development can be established, thereby enhancing the fiscal system’s capacity to withstand uncertainty-driven shocks and its resilience in recovery.

Key words: local government debt, resilience, central-local fiscal relations, fiscal risk, fiscal resilience