在中国信贷市场长期资金供给不足的背景下，企业被动选择以短期债务支撑长期投资的激进型投资方式，即“短债长投”。在经济进入新常态和去杠杆的政策背景下，企业“短债长投”债务期限错配行为容易引发信贷风险、经营风险和流动性风险，是目前防范化解企业债务风险亟待解决的核心债务问题。本文围绕企业“短债长投”展开，从信贷供给端和需求端视角出发，探讨银行竞争和数字金融的发展能否有效解决信贷期限结构配置失衡和企业“短债长投”错配问题。首先，作为中国现有金融体系主要资金供给方，在信息不对称的市场环境下，商业银行基于风险控制和政策监管等因素考量，倾向于减少长期信贷资金供给，导致信贷供给端期限结构失衡以及企业端债务期限错配。本文首先从信贷供给端期限结构失衡视角出发，采用理论模型和实证分析验证了提高银行竞争能够优化银行信贷期限结构配置，促使银行基于争夺下游客户弥补潜在利润下滑的考虑增加中长期信贷资金供给，有效改善了信贷供给的期限结构失衡。其次，本文从信贷需求端的研究视角，进一步探究了银行竞争能否在改善银行信贷期限结构的基础上，缓解企业“短债长投”的期限错配问题。本文以银监会金融许可证数据构造地区银行竞争指标，结合工业企业数据，通过固定效应和工具变量回归分析验证了提高银行竞争能够有效缓解企业“短债长投”错配问题，降低企业潜在债务违约风险。同时，以2006年取消外资银行业务地域限制进行双重差分的检验也进一步验证了深化银行市场化改革对企业“短债长投”的政策效果。最后，考虑到近年来数字金融的快速发展给传统金融机构和信贷市场带来的机遇和挑战，本文创新性地引入数字金融，验证这一新兴金融业态对商业银行竞争格局、银行信贷期限结构配置和企业“短债长投”的影响。固定效应和工具变量实证结果表明数字金融的发展对银行及企业都产生了影响。对银行而言，数字金融的发展加剧了银行间业务竞争，并且改善了银行信贷期限结构，提高了长期信贷供给能力。同时，数字金融发展对信贷供给端的优化调整进一步影响了信贷需求端，有效缓解了企业债务期限错配问题，降低了企业潜在的债务风险。从长远角度来看，解决企业“短债长投”错配问题、防范化解企业债务风险需要依靠深化金融供给侧结构性改革，通过深化银行业市场化改革以及推动数字金融的发展，提高信贷市场长期资金供给能力，建立市场资金长效供给机制。

“Short-term Debt for Long-term Investment” describes the phenomenon that corporates use short-term debt to support long-term investment due to insufficient long-term fund supply in Chinese credit market. With China's economy entering the new normal and implementing deleveraging related regulatory policies, credit, operational, and liquidity risks caused by debt maturity mismatch has become of the key financial problems remaining to be solved. Our paper studies from the perspective of credit supply and demand market and tries to understand whether bank competition and digital finance can solve credit maturity structure imbalance and how it alleviates the “Short-term Debt for Long-term Investment” problem.Firstly, the considerable information asymmetry existing in credit market in China results in commercial banks, the main supplier for credit market in China, supplying less long-term credit than the market demands for risk management, regulatory policy compliance, and other considerations. This leads to credit market supply maturity structure imbalance and corporate debt maturity mismatch. Our paper builds a simple theoretical model from the perspective of credit supply maturity imbalance and conducts several empirical tests to prove that higher level of bank competition can alleviate this imbalance and mismatch. Specifically, under higher bank competition, banks compete more intensely for borrowers and thus are more willing to supply mid-term and long-term credit. Consequently, mid-term and long-term credit in overall credit market rises and bank credit maturity structure improves.Secondly, our paper extends the study from credit supply to credit demand market and examines whether corporate debt maturity mismatch can be alleviated when credit supply market becomes more efficient. Our paper runs several fixed effect and instrumental variable regressions using bank competition index （constructed through CBRC financial license data） and China’s Annual Survey of Industrial Firms （ASIF）, and empirically shows that higher bank competition implies a lower corporate “Short-term Debt for Long-term Investment” mismatch problem. Besides, our paper also conducts an DID test using the removal of foreign-funded bank business location restriction in 2006 as an exogenous shock and demonstrates that the deepening of bank industry reform has significant impact on alleviating corporate “Short-term Debt for Long-term Investment” problem.Last but not the least, realizing the influence digital finance has brought and might bring to traditional financial institutions and credit market in the future, our paper takes digital finance into account and tries to analyze how this new form of financial business might influence commercial bank competition and bank credit maturity structure as well as the “Short-term Debt for Long-term Investment” problem. Results from fixed effect and instrumental variable regressions show that digital finance raises bank competition, promotes bank credit maturity structure, and increases long-term credit supply. For corporates, through improving credit supply, digital finance also affects downstream corporates. As a result, corporates face less debt maturity mismatch problem and thus have less potential debt risks.From a long-term perspective, solving corporate debt maturity structure mismatch and forestall major corporate debt risks rely on further financial supply-side structural reform. Specifically, the growth in long-term credit market fund supply and a healthy long-term mechanism for market fund supply both rely on further bank industry marketization reform and the development of digital finance.