Qualitative Characteristics of Accounting Information and Choice of Accounting Measurement Attributes

China's accounting standards,IASB,and FASB define relevance and reliability(i.e.representational faithfulness) differently,which has some influence on the choice of accounting measurement attributes(i.e.historical cost and fair value).It is argued that,in the phase of developing accounting standards,relevance should be considered first and reliability comes next, whereas in the phase of preparing financial reports reliability should be the top priority.Enterprises must take account of the characteristics of the objects for measurement when they choose measurement attributes,as well as the relationship between these two qualitative characteristics.It is true that the practice of measuring fair value in China has its own distinctive features.