Throughout the ancient books preserved in China for thousands of years, we can see that words such as "national use", "national plan", "expenditure" and "financial management" are all records of today's "finance", that is, the government's financial management methods, as well as words related to today's financial management departments such as "internal history of treating millet", "big agricultural order" and "big agricultural order". Although the word "finance" is used in China now, it has only appeared in Chinese vocabulary for a hundred years.

According to textual research, in the 24th year of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty, namely 1898, there was a provision of "reforming finance and implementing the national budget" in the imperial edict of the Reform Movement of 1898, which was the first time that the word "finance" was used in government documents. The use of the word "finance" was indirectly "introduced" from Japan under the guidance of introducing western cultural ideas at that time, while Japan came from the English word "public finance".

During the Revolution of 1911, Dr. Sun Yat-sen repeatedly used the word "finance" to emphasize financial reform. When the government of the Republic of China was founded, the institution in charge of state revenue and expenditure was called the Ministry of Finance. The English word for the U.S. government counterpart is "Department of Treasury", which originally means Treasury or Treasury, and is also translated as "Ministry of Finance" in China.

Finance is the product of the development of social productive forces to a certain historical stage. Before the country came into being and at the end of the primitive commune, there was an economic phenomenon that a part of the limited surplus products were used to meet the common needs of society.

But this is only the collective distribution of the fruits of collective labor, which belongs to economic distribution, and there is no financial distribution yet. After the country came into being, the economically dominant class, in order to maintain the existence of the country, relied on the political power to forcibly occupy and dominate some social products to ensure the operation of the state machine and the development of society, thus separating the independent financial distribution from the general economic distribution, thus generating finance.

Due to the different modes of social production and the types of countries decided by them, finance has experienced the historical evolution of slavery state finance, feudal state finance, capitalist state finance and socialist state finance.

Capitalist countries and their previous finances are based on the private ownership of the means of production, which is the extra exploitation of the working people by the economic ruling class with state power, reflecting the super-economic exploitation relationship between the exploiting class and the working people. The finance of socialist countries is based on public ownership of the means of production, and the system of exploitation has been eliminated. It is a national finance that serves the fundamental interests of the people and embodies a new distribution relationship that is taken from and used by the people. However, different types of national finance generally have the following characteristics: national subjectivity, free financial distribution, compulsion and sociality. These characteristics are interrelated, which distinguishes financial distribution from other economic distribution.