中国的债务破产，只是时间问题

好可怕！...



China’s financial system

中国的金融体系

The coming debt bust

即将到来的债务破产

It is a question of when, not if, real trouble will hit in China

中国遇到大麻烦只是时间问题



CHINA was right to turn on the credit taps to prop up growth after the global financial crisis. It was wrong not to turn them off again. The country’s debthas increased just as quickly over the past two years as in the two years after the 2008 crunch. Its debt-to-GDP ratio has soared from 150% to nearly 260% overa decade, the kind of surge that is usually followed by a financial bust or anabrupt slowdown.

在全球金融危机之后，中国打开了信贷闸门以提振经济，这样做是对的。然而现在的错误在于没有关闭这道闸门。在过去的两年中，中国的债务增长速度之快仿佛2008年金融危机随后的两年。10年里，中国的债务与GDP的比值已经从150%飙升至260%。这种飙升通常出现在金融危机或者经济急速放缓之后。

Chinawill not be an exception to that rule. Problem loans have doubled in two yearsand, officially, are already 5.5% of banks’ total lending. The reality isgrimmer. Roughly two-fifths of new debt is swallowed by interest on existingloans; in 2014, 16% of the 1,000 biggest Chinese firms owed more in interestthan they earned before tax. China requires more and more credit to generateless and less growth: it now takes nearly four yuan of new borrowing togenerate one yuan of additional GDP, up from just over one yuan of credit before the financial crisis. With the government’s connivance, debt levels canprobably keep climbing for a while, perhaps even for a few more years. But notfor ever.

中国不会是这一规则的例外。两年中，不良贷款翻了一倍。官方数据显示不良贷款已经占到银行全部贷款的5.5%。现实更为严峻。大体上2/5的最新贷款被现有贷款利息吞没。2014年，1000家最大的中国公司中，有16%的税前收入比银行利息少。中国需要越来越多的信贷来产生越来越少的增长：现在它需要将近4元新的信贷才能产出1元的额外GDP，而在金融危机之前，只需要1元多一点的信贷。由于zf放任，债务水平可能还要继续攀升，可能会持续好几年——但不会是永远。

Whenthe debt cycle turns, both asset prices and the real economy will be in for ashock. That won’t be fun for anyone. It is true that China has been fastidiousin capping its external liabilities (it is a net creditor). Its dangers arehome-made. But the damage from a big Chinese credit blow-up would still be immense. China is the world’s second-biggest economy; its banking sector is thebiggest, with assets equivalent to 40% of global GDP. Its stockmarkets, evenafter last year’s crash, are together worth $6 trillion, second only toAmerica’s. And its bond market, at $7.5 trillion, is the world’s third-biggestand growing fast. A mere 2% devaluation of the yuan last summer sent globalstockmarkets crashing; a bigger bust would do far worse. A mild economicslowdown caused trouble for commodity exporters around the world; a hardlanding would be painful for all those who benefit from Chinese demand.

当债务周期出现时，资产价格和实体经济都会受到冲击。这对任何人来说都不会有趣。是，中国在限制外债上相当苛刻（它是个净债权国）。它的危险在于国内。中国信贷危机的爆发带来的危害依然相当之大。中国是世界第二大的经济体，它的银行部门是全球最大的，资产约占全球GDP的40%。即便在去年的股灾之后，中国的股市总市值有6万亿美元，仅次于美国。中国的债券市场市值7.5万亿美元，全球第三大并且发展迅猛。去年夏天人民币2%的贬值造成全球股市崩盘；一次更大的危机将会造成更大的破坏。经济增速温和放缓已经给世界范围内的产品出口国带来麻烦；一次经济硬着陆将会给从中国需求中获利的国家带来痛苦。

Brace,brace

面对，面对

Optimistshave drawn comfort from two ideas. First, over three-plus decades of reform,China’s officials have consistently shown that once they identified problems,they had the will and skill to fix them. Second, control of the financialsystem—the state owns the major banks and most of their biggest debtors—gavethem time to clean things up.

乐观主义者从两个方面得到安慰。其一，30多年改革以来，中国的官员们一直显示出一旦他们找到了问题，他们有意愿和能力去解决问题。其二，在控制金融系统方面，国家拥有大的银行和大多数最大借款方，这使得他们有时间把问题处理好。

Boththese sources of comfort are fading away. This is a government not so muchguiding events as struggling to keep up with them. In the past year alone,China has spent nearly $200 billion to prop up the stockmarket; $65 billion ofbank loans have gone bad; financial frauds have cost investors at least $20billion; and $600 billion of capital has left the country. To help pump upgrowth, officials have inflated a property bubble. Debt is still expandingtwice as fast as the economy.

这两方面的安慰都在逐渐消逝。这届zf与其说在开创局面，不如说在挣扎着维持局面。单说过去这一年，中国在提振股市上就花了接近2000亿美元；650亿美元的银行贷款变成呆账；金融欺诈花掉投资者至少200亿美元；6000亿美元的资本从中国流出。为了提振经济，官员们将房地产搞到泡沫状态。债务的增速依然是经济增速的两倍。

Atthe same time, as our special report this week shows, the government’s grip onfinance is slipping. Despite repeated efforts to restrain them, looselyregulated forms of lending are growing quickly: such “shadow assets” haveincreased by more than 30% annually over the past three years. In theory,shadow banks diversify sources of credit and spread risk away from the regularbanks. In practice, the lines between the shadow and formal banking systems arebadly blurred.

与此同时，正如本周的特别报道显示的那样，zf对金融的控制正在松动。尽管反复采取措施试图控制住金融，但是各种松散管理的借贷增长迅猛：此类“影子资产”在过去3年中以每年30%的增速增长。理论上，影子银行使得信贷的渠道多元化，分散了通常银行那种风险。而在实际上，影子银行和征税银行体系的界限模糊不清。

Thatcreates two risks. The first is higher-than-expected losses for the banks.Hungry for profits in a slowing economy, plenty of Chinese banks havemis-categorised risky loans as investments to dodge scrutiny and lessen capitalrequirements. These shadow loans were worth roughly 16% of standard loans inmid-2015, up from just 4% in 2012.

这会造成两种风险。首先是，银行会收到比预期更高的损失。在经济放缓的形势下，为了逐利，许多中国银行将有风险的贷款当做投资以躲避审查，减少资本需求。这些影子贷款在2015年中期占到标准贷款的约16%，2012年这一数据仅为4%。

Thesecond risk is liquidity. The banks have become ever more reliant on “wealthmanagement products”, whereby they pay higher rates for what are, in effect,short-term deposits and put them into longer-term assets. For years Chinarestricted bank loans to less than 75% of their deposit base, ensuring thatthey had plenty of cash in reserve. Now the real level is nearing 100%, athreshold where a sudden shortage in funding—the classic precursor to bankingcrises—is well within the realm of possibility. Midsized banks have been themost active in expanding; they are the place to look for sudden trouble.

第二个风险是流动性。银行变得越来越依赖于“理财产品”，对短期储蓄支付高的利息并将其置为长期资产。多年以来，中国限制银行借贷超过其存款基础75%，以保证储备有足够的现金。现在这一真实水平接近100%，这一阈值，资金的突然短缺（银行危机的经典先兆）极为可能发生。中等规模的银行在扩张上面最为积极，它们最有可能突然出现问题。

Pandamonium

Theend to China’s debt build-up would not look exactly like past financialblow-ups. China’s shadow-banking system is big, but it has not spawned anyproducts nearly as complex or international in reach as America’s bundles ofsubprime mortgages in 2008. Its relatively insulated financial system meansthat parallels with the 1997-98 Asian crisis, in which countries from Thailandto South Korea borrowed too much from abroad, are thin. Some worry that Chinawill look like Japan in the 1990s, slowly grinding towards stagnation. But itsfinancial system is more chaotic, with more pressure for capital outflows, thanwas Japan’s; a Chinese crisis is likely to be sharper and more sudden thanJapan’s chronic malaise.

终结中国的债务增长不会像上次金融危机那样。中国的影子银行系统庞大，但是还没有产出任何复杂的或者国际化的如美国2008年次贷危机那样的产物。它相对封闭的金融系统与97-98年的亚洲金融危机——从泰国到韩国都从国外贷了很多款——相比较，还是薄弱的。一些人担心中国会像上世纪90年代的日本，慢慢走向停滞。但是中国的金融系统更为混乱，由于资本外流的压力比日本大，中国的危机很可能比日本的长期低迷来得更为迅速和突然。

Onething is certain. The longer China delays a reckoning with its problems, themore severe the eventual consequences will be. For a start, it should plan forturmoil. Policy co-ordination was appalling during last year’s stockmarketcrash; regulators must work out in advance who monitors what and prepareemergency responses. Rather than deploying both fiscal and monetary stimulus tokeep growth above the official target of at least 6.5% this year (which is, inany event, unnecessarily fast), the government should save its firepower for areal calamity. The central bank should also put on ice its plans tointernationalise the yuan; a premature opening of the capital account wouldlead only to big outflows and bigger trouble, when the financial system isalready on shaky ground.

有件事是确定无疑的。中国评估问题拖得越久，最终的结果就越糟糕。从一开始，它就需要做好面临混乱的计划。去年股市崩盘时的政策协调让人震惊。监管者必须提前弄清谁监管什么并且制定紧急应对方案。中国zf应当保存实力应对实际的灾难，而不是通过财政和货币刺激达到6.5%的年度目标。央行应当推迟人民币的国际化，过早开放资本账户只会导致巨大的资金外流和更大的问题，而此时的金融体系已经不稳。

Mostimportant, China must start to curb the relentless rise of debt. The assumptionthat the government of Xi Jinping will keep bailing out its banks, borrowersand depositors is pervasive—and not just in China itself. It must tolerate moredefaults, close failed companies and let growth sag. This will be tough, but itis too late for China to avoid pain. The task now is to avert something farworse.

最重要的是，中国必须开始控制债务的持续上升。普遍认为，zf将继续帮助银行、借款人和储户——不仅仅局限在国内。中国必须容忍更多的违约、关闭失败的公司并且允许经济下行。这将很难，但是对中国来说，要避免痛苦已经算晚了。现在的任务时避免一些更为糟糕的事情发生。

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