信貸市場出了問題 中國理財產品前景堪憂
China Development Bank is the core policy bank in China. It has more than Rmb 6tn ($984bn) in assets, is wholly owned by the state and is as good for its money as the government itself. So when CDB is forced to cut the size of a proposed bond issue by 60 per cent, as happened this month, you can be sure something is not right in China’s credit markets.
中國國家開發銀行(China Development Bank)是中國最重要的政策性銀行。它擁有超過6萬億元人民幣(9840億美元)的資產，爲全資國有銀行，信用與政府相當。因此，本月當國開行被迫將擬定的債券發行量削減60%時，可以肯定中國的信貸市場出了問題。Other respected and credible companies have also been forced to delay or reduce bond issues, or pay more for their money. Take US-listed internet group Baidu. Last year, it sold a bond to US investors that was priced without the extra that emerging market borrowers usually pay. But in recent months, it struggled to get a Chinese bond away.
另外一些名譽好、信用高的企業要麼被迫推遲發行債券或削減發行量，要麼付出更高利息。以在美國上市的互聯網公司百度(Baidu)爲例。去年它向美國投資者發行債券時，沒有支付新興市場借款人通常需要支付的溢價。但近幾個月，百度在中國發債卻遭遇困難。China’s cost of capital has begun to rise even though the government seems some way from the liberalisation of deposit rates that has held down borrowing costs for so long. Banks must already pay more for funds in the interbank market. Meanwhile, wealth management products (WMPs) – short-term savings products sold mostly by banks to retail and institutional investors – and trust products continue to grow. Both are currently offering better returns than straight corporate bonds to all investors, including banks themselves.
長期以來，低儲蓄利率壓低了中國的借款成本。雖然距離政府完全放開儲蓄利率尚有時日，但中國的資本成本已經開始上升。銀行已經必須爲在拆借市場借款付出更高成本。與此同時，理財產品——主要由銀行向零售和機構投資者銷售的短期儲蓄產品——和信託產品仍在不斷增長。二者目前均能向所有投資者（包括銀行本身）提供比企業債券更高的回報率。
The issue here is less about the rising cost of money – which is inevitable as markets come to play a “decisive” role in China, as the post-Plenum buzzword has it – than it is about bad policy, or at least the consequences of slow policy.
十八屆三中全會過後，讓市場在中國發揮“決定性”作用成爲熱門話題，資金成本上升不可避免。問題在更大程度上並不在此，而在於不良政策——或者至少說是決策遲緩的後果。With financial reform, Beijing may be gracefully “crossing the river by feeling the stones” as advocated by the late Deng Xiaoping, but it is simultaneously turning a blind eye to jerry-rigged fording devices, like WMPs, just down stream.
對於金融改革，中國高層或許可以像已故領袖鄧小平推崇的那樣，從容不迫地“摸着石頭過河”。但與此同時，它對下游那些粗製濫造的“過河”工具（如理財產品）視若無睹。Plenty of ink has been spilled on the risks tied up in WMPs, but much less on what they are really there to do. Their role is to begin to allow market forces to affect the cost of money for banks and companies ahead of interest rate reform; WMPs also legitimise investments that have not yet been officially approved, or are banned in banking channels. They do this simply by being an intermediary, or wrapper around the banned products.
關於理財產品蘊含的風險已經不乏論述，但它們存在的作用卻鮮有人提及。它們的作用是在利率改革之前允許市場力量影響銀行和企業的資金成本，以及將那些尚未被正式批准、或被銀行渠道封殺的投資方式合法化。爲此，理財產品扮演着“中介”或被禁產品“外包裝”的角色。Hence, they have been used to supply high-cost capital to property developers, as well as some state-owned enterprises. More recently, they have moved on to investing in hedge funds. Managers and their friends or family put up the first chunk of equity, then WMPs add up to four times that in leverage, say Shanghai hedge fund specialists. This allows insurers, for example, to indirectly invest in funds that officially they should not.
於是，理財產品被用於向房地產開發商和部分國有企業提供高成本資金。最近，它們又涉足對衝基金投資領域。上海的對衝基金專業人士表示，經理及其親友先籌得第一筆股份，再通過理財產品構築最高可達4倍的槓桿。舉例而言，這可以讓保險商間接投資於一些本來不被官方許可的投資。One of the great oddities in Chinese financial policy is that liberalisation happens as much negatively as positively. Companies like the financial arm of ecommerce group Alibaba have found that the way to develop products is often to start using them and see if someone tells you to stop. It can lend to small businesses but was warned away from early trials of consumer loans.
中國金融政策的一大奇怪之處在於，自由化的發生包括正面和負面兩種方式。電商集團阿里巴巴(Alibaba)旗下的金融子公司等企業發現，開發產品的方法往往是先上馬，然後坐視是否會被叫停。阿里金融可以向小企業發放貸款，但早期試水消費者貸款被叫停。Financial innovation is rarely given preapproval, bankers say. The industry is forced to “feel the stones” in the absence of clear policy. Surely Deng’s metaphor was about discovering what works, not what would gain official sanction.
銀行家表示，金融創新很少能得到事先批准。在沒有明確政策指引的情況下，行業被迫“摸着石頭過河”。毫無疑問，鄧小平這則比喻的要義是尋找行之有效的道路，而不是官方會點頭的東西。Viewed optimistically, WMPs have introduced a market for funding, lending and investing that ought to help banks and others learn to assess risks and to balance changeable costs and returns. However, their role in legitimising not yet sanctioned, or already banned, activities just adds to the inefficiency and costs in the distribution of Chinese capital.
樂觀地看，理財產品提供了一個融資、貸款和投資的市場，應當能幫助銀行等機構學會評估風險，在風雲變幻的成本和回報之間進行權衡。然而，理財產品在合法化那些尚未被批准、或已被禁止的金融活動方面的作用，只會徒增中國資本分配中的低效和成本。The power of each new yuan to generate economic growth is waning. The leakage of costs through extra layers of WMPs makes this worse. China’s cost of capital will rise, but it does not have to rise that much. Interest costs track gross domestic product growth rates, according to Bernstein Research. If China grows at 6-7 per cent for the next few years, new debt ought not to cost much more – so long as it is dispensed reasonably efficiently.
每一元人民幣促進經濟增長的能力正在萎縮。理財產品附加結構帶來的成本溢出，令情況雪上加霜。中國的資本成本將上升，但沒有理由上漲那麼多。伯恩斯坦研究公司(Bernstein Research)表示，利息成本應當追隨國內生產總值(GDP)增長率。如果中國在接下來幾年每年增長6%至7%，新債務的利息成本不應比這個水平高出很多——只要分配達到合理的高效率。For this to happen, the single most important reform would be market pricing of deposit rates. This will be dangerous for banks, as Jiang Jianqing, head of ICBC, China’s biggest bank, told the FT recently: “If you do badly, you will be wiped out.”
要讓這成爲現實，最重要的改革措施將是讓市場決定儲蓄利率。這對銀行是危險的，正如中國最大銀行工商銀行(ICBC)董事長姜建清最近對英國《金融時報》所表示的那樣：“你幹得不好就要淘汰。”But finance keeps moving away from official channels – around one-fifth of credit was formed outside of banks in 2009; now that share has doubled, according to Bernstein. To protect the banks, Beijing must move slowly; but if it moves too slowly, good companies could be starved of reasonable funding – and it runs the risk that China’s financial river will end up clogged with the detritus of too many bad experiments outside the banks.
但金融活動正不斷脫離官方渠道——伯恩斯坦稱，2009年有五分之一的信貸來自銀行外，而現在這一比例已經翻番。爲保護銀行，中國高層只能慢慢來；但如果它過於遲緩，優質公司可能得不到合理的融資，而且銀行以外開展了太多不良試驗，中國的金融之河最終可能塞滿這些試驗的沉渣。
