In his September 2026 program, Zhai Shanying claimed that 100% of China's provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in 2026 will be unable to achieve fiscal self-sufficiency, with fiscal expenditures exceeding fiscal revenues, and that local governments are therefore opening up new sources of revenue through methods such as land renewal fees.
The CCP's political-legal system is accused of retroactively reviewing old cases and cleaning out networks of interests on the grounds of increasing fiscal revenue, while carrying out cross-border recovery of illicit assets; the scope of investigation may cover closed cases, case-handling personnel, and related parties.
The CCP's 20th Central Committee left it until the last minute to finalize the date of its Fifth Plenary Session, and the notice focuses on strictly governing the Party, reflecting a lack of consensus within the Party due to the fiscal crisis and the collapse of the spoils-sharing table.
In August 2026, it was reported online that grassroots civil servants in Shuncheng District, Fushun City, Liaoning Province, were once again facing wage arrears, with some personnel also seeing delays in social insurance, housing provident fund, and subsidies.
In late June 2026, Chuangda Bus, a privately operated public transit company in Panyu District, Guangzhou, fell into arrears on about half a year of drivers' wages, sparking a collective strike by drivers demanding unpaid pay and causing multiple bus routes connecting Panyu and Nansha to suspend service, exposing a fiscal crisis in local public transportation.
In 2019, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences released actuarial projections stating that the broad-caliber social security surplus would peak in 2027 and be exhausted by 2035, but in reality the timeline was pushed back due to increased fiscal subsidies.
The shortfall in urban employee pension insurance in Heilongjiang Province had already exceeded 11 billion yuan as early as 2011, and the current-period balance turned negative in 2013 — 15 to 17 years earlier than the nationally projected 2028 turning point.
Driven by a financial crisis, the Qing government announced the nationalization of the Sichuan-Hankou and Guangzhou-Hankou railways, triggering a stock market crash. Subsequently, the government mortgaged railway rights to the Four-Power Banking Consortium, directly igniting the Railway Protection Movement.