中国银行业坏账阴影重现 Banking: Bad loans seem set to worsen

China’s quick and effective response to the financial crisis has been credited with saving the country from a prolonged downturn and restoring growth, not only domestically but across much of Asia.

中国对本次金融危机快速而有效的反应，使国家没有陷入长期经济低迷，并恢复了增长，得到国内和亚洲许多国家的盛赞。

The collapse in exports in late 2008, combined with a stuttering real estate market, prompted Beijing to wheel out a Rmb4,000bn ($600bn) stimulus package.

2008年末，中国出口急剧下滑，再加上房地产市场萎靡不振，促使中国政府推出了4万亿元人民币（合6000亿美元）的刺激方案。

But the only way to get all that money out into the economy quickly without extensive waste and corruption was to channel it through banks to large state-owned enterprises. The stimulus plan became largely a credit plan.

但要让这么多资金迅速进入经济，而不造成严重浪费和腐败，唯一的方法就是通过银行向大型国有企业放贷。由此，刺激计划基本上演变成了一个信贷计划。

In 2009, with prompting from the government, which owns the bulk of all their shares, Chinese banks extended Rmb9,600bn in new loans, more than double the amount lent in 2008.

2009年，在政府的敦促下，主要由政府控股的中国各家银行共新发放贷款9.6万亿元人民币，较2008年增加了一倍以上。

In this process, a decade of reforms aimed at commercialising banks’ operations and introducing strict risk management and credit control structures was partially reversed.

在此过程中，旨在实现银行商业化运营、引进严格风险管理和信贷控制结构的十年改革进程，在一定程度上出现了倒退。

“As a banker, when your biggest shareholder – which just happens to be the government and the regulator as well – tells you to lend as much as you can, you’re not going to worry too much about risk assessment,” says one long-time head of a foreign bank.

“作为银行家，当你的大股东——碰巧也是你的政府和监管机构——告诉你要尽可能多地放贷时，你不会太关心风险评估，”在一家外资银行长期担任主管的人士表示。

In the 1990s, Chinese lenders operated like piggy banks for government officials who borrowed enormous amounts for pet projects. By the end of the decade, the banking system was technically insolvent, with the system-wide non-performing loan ratio well above 30 per cent.

上世纪90年代，中国的银行就像政府官员的存钱罐，他们为自己青睐的项目向银行筹借了巨额资金。到上世纪末，从技术角度看，银行体系已资不抵债，整个系统的不良贷款率远远高于30%。

The decade-long clean-up and reform of state-controlled banks has only recently entered its final stages, with Agricultural Bank of China, the last of the giant lenders, selling a portion of its shares to the public in Hong Kong and Shanghai in July in the world’s largest initial public offering.

之后的十年里，国家控股银行得到清理和改革，这个过程最近才进入最后阶段。今年7月，四大国有银行的最后一家——中国农业银行(Agricultural Bank of China)在香港和上海同时上市，成为全球规模最大的首次公开发行(IPO)。

A crucial element of the banking sector reforms was supposed to be the introduction of modern risk management and credit evaluation procedures and much time and energy was put into setting up dedicated teams and departments to turn these into reality.

这场银行业改革的一个关键因素应该是引进现代风险管理与信贷评估程序，中国也投入了大量时间和精力，成立专业团队和部门，使这些想法变为现实。

But starting in late 2008, when the government opened the credit floodgates and ordered banks to lend as much as they could, all the careful risk management work appeared to go out the window.

但从2008年末开始，政府打开了信贷闸门，下令银行尽可能多地发放贷款，于是，此前所有谨慎的风险控制工作，似乎被抛在脑后。

“The banks were practically begging large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) or local governments to take new loans, because they were seen as the least risky borrowers,” according to one senior western banker in Beijing. “Because the SOEs didn’t really need the money for their main businesses, they mostly put it into real estate.”

“银行实际上是在求着大型国企或地方政府申请新的贷款，因为它们被视为风险最低的借款者，”一位身在北京的资深西方银行家表示。“由于国企的主业其实并不需要资金，所以它们大多把钱投入了房地产市场。”

The government has introduced a series of policies this year in an attempt at reining in the booming real estate market, where prices are well out of reach for most of the population.

随着房价超出大多数人的承受能力，中国政府今年出台了一系列政策，试图遏制热火朝天的房地产市场。

So far, these attempts appear to have done little to bring down prices but if the market were to collapse it could be catastrophic for the banks, which have difficulties even in identifying how exposed they are to a downturn in property.

迄今为止，这些举措似乎对压低房价收效甚微，但房地产市场如果崩盘，将给银行带来灾难。银行甚至弄不清楚，如果房地产业下滑，它们将遭遇多大的风险。

An even more pressing concern is the potentially huge crop of fresh bad loans waiting to emerge from among all the loans extended to opaquely structured local government financing vehicles.

更为紧迫的担忧是，银行向结构晦暗不明的地方政府融资平台发放了大量贷款，这随时可能导致大量新不良贷款的出现。

Local governments are not allowed to issue bonds or borrow freely from banks themselves, so most set up special-purpose financing platforms and inject some assets such as government land into them so they can borrow from state-controlled banks to fund infrastructure or other projects.

地方政府本身不能发行债券，或从银行随意贷款，因此大多数地方政府建立了特殊目的融资平台，将一些资产（如政府土地）注入其中，这样一来，它们就能从国家控股的银行贷款，为基础建设或其它项目融资。

A recent inspection by the government found that outstanding loans to these local government financing vehicles were Rmb7,660bn at the end of June and that nearly Rmb2,000bn of that was at high risk of default.

政府今年进行的一次检查显示，截至6月底，地方政府融资平台贷款余额达7.660万亿元人民币，其中近2万亿存在严重偿还风险。

According to official estimates, only 24 per cent of this lending to local government-backed projects was producing enough cash flow to repay loans, while 26 per cent is highly likely to suffer default because it was not backed by sufficient cash flow or collateral.

据官方估计，在银行向地方政府支持的项目发放的这些贷款中，只有24%产生了足以偿还贷款的现金流，有26%因为缺乏足够的现金流或抵押支持，很可能无法得到按时偿还。

Officials say that at least some of the Rmb2,000bn that would not be repaid has been embezzled or punted in the stock market.

政府官员称，在2万亿可能无法得到偿还的贷款中，至少有一部分被挪用或投入了股市。

For the remaining 50 per cent, or about Rmb3,830bn, the banks would not be able to recover their loans directly from the projects they had funded but they would probably eventually be repaid through secondary sources, such as government revenues, the inspection found.

检查发现，其余50%的贷款（约3.830万亿元人民币），银行将无法从其资助的项目中直接得到偿还，但最后可能会通过间接途径（如政府收入）得到偿付。

A recent survey conducted by PwC and the China Banking Association found that banks believe bad loans will remain at low levels (current industry-wide average rates are 2-3 per cent) in the next three years. But almost all respondents feared bad loans will rise sharply in the longer term.

普华永道(PwC)与中国银行业协会(CBA)近期进行的一项联合调查发现，银行相信，不良贷款率未来三年将维持在低水平（目前的行业平均水平为2%-3%）。但几乎所有的受访者都担心，在更长的时间里，不良贷款率可能急剧上升。

For Chinese bankers and regulatory officials it is not a question of whether the banking system will see a large rise in non-performing loans in the future but how big the pile of bad debt will eventually be.

对于中国的银行家与监管官员来说，未来中国银行业不良贷款将大幅增加，似乎已是定势，问题只在于，不良贷款最终会积累到多么大的规模。