Weak economic growth means the country is particularly vulnerable to contagion
疲弱的经济增长意味着该国特别容易受到危机的传染

Aug 28th 2023 | SHANGHAI
2023年8月28日|www.economist.com |中文由腾讯翻译

Shares in xinhua trust, a Chinese shadow lender, are selling for rock-bottom prices. The outfit went bankrupt in May, becoming the first Chinese trust to fall in more than two decades. Since then chunks of the firm have been put up for sale on Taobao, an online e-commerce platform, at a 30% discount. Its company cars were recently added to the auction, which has been mandated by a court. A bargain-hunter could snap up Xinhua trademarks for just 12,000 yuan ($1,650).
中国影子银行新华信托（xinhua trust）的股票正以最低价出售。该公司于5月破产，成为20多年来第一家破产的中国信托公司。从那时起，该公司的大量股份就以七折的价格在网上电子商务平台淘宝上销售。该公司的汽车最近被添加到拍卖中，这是由法院授权的。一个喜欢捡便宜的人可以以12,000元（1,650美元）的价格抢购新华商标。

The shadow lender’s demise was an early warning: the same forces that brought it down are now ripping through China’s 21trn yuan trust industry. The country’s economic growth has been weaker than expected, and property developers are caught in an unprecedented wave of defaults and restructurings. China’s trusts, which channel funds from investors to infrastructure, property and other opportunities, are exposed to both developments. Although Xinhua’s bankruptcy has been relatively straightforward, a bigger blow-up may be on the way at Zhongrong, one of the country’s largest trusts, which missed payments to clients in mid-August. Panicked investors fear more firms will be ensnared, and that collapses will lead to further economic problems.
影子银行的倒闭是一个早期警告：同样的力量，把它打倒了，现在正在撕裂中国的21万亿元信托业。中国的经济增长弱于预期，房地产开发商陷入了前所未有的违约和重组浪潮。中国的信托公司将投资者的资金引导到基础设施、房地产和其他机会，它们受到了这两方面的影响。尽管新华社的破产相对简单，但中国最大的信托公司之一中融集团可能即将面临更大的打击。中融集团在8月中旬未能向客户付款。恐慌的投资者担心更多的公司将陷入困境，而崩溃将导致进一步的经济问题。

During China’s years of strong economic growth, trusts and their investors flourished, with investment products often offering annual returns of 10% or more. Property developers and local governments were willing to pay lofty interest rates, transactions faced less regulatory scrutiny than bank lending and trusts benefited from the widespread perception that investors’ cash was safeguarded by the state in a fashion similar to bank deposits. That perception is now long gone—and as more developers default, it is likely that more shadow banks will be unable to pay out.
在中国经济强劲增长的那些年，信托公司及其投资者蓬勃发展，投资产品的年回报率通常在10%以上。房地产开发商和地方政府愿意支付高额利率，交易面临的监管审查少于银行贷款，信托受益于投资者现金受到国家保护的普遍看法，其方式类似于银行存款。这种看法现在早已不复存在，随着更多开发商违约，可能会有更多影子银行无法偿付。

Zhongrong, which managed about 630bn yuan in trust products at the end of last year, shows how pain has spread from the property industry to the financial system. When Sunac, China’s fifth-largest developer, defaulted last year, local governments began freezing company funds in order to ensure projects were finished. One of the locations where funds were frozen was Wuhan, a city in central China, and the money included investments linked to Zhongrong. Across the industry, about 7% of trust products were invested directly in the property sector at the end of March. Indirect investments via securities push that exposure to as much 30%, reckon analysts at anz, a bank.
中融信托去年年底管理着约6300亿元人民币的信托产品，这显示出痛苦是如何从房地产行业蔓延到金融体系的。当中国第五大开发商融创去年违约时，地方政府开始冻结公司资金，以确保项目完工。资金被冻结的地点之一是中国中部城市武汉，这些资金包括与中融相关的投资。从整个行业来看，3月底约有7%的信托产品直接投资于房地产行业。据澳新银行的分析师估计，通过证券间接投资的风险敞口高达30%。

The risk of contagion is especially high because lending by trusts is ubiquitous and opaque, and because investment in them produces tangled financial ties. Zhongrong’s investors include several listed companies, for instance. Such companies often invest in trusts in order to eke out higher returns. Trusts have meanwhile invested about 4.6trn yuan in equities, bonds and other funds. They have also lent to local-government projects, and now cities and provinces across China are struggling to repay debts, which are estimated to have hit 57trn yuan at the end of 2022.
危机蔓延的风险尤其高，因为信托贷款无处不在且不透明，而且对信托的投资会产生错综复杂的金融关系。例如，中融的投资者包括几家上市公司。这些公司通常投资于信托基金，以获得更高的回报。与此同时，信托公司在股票、债券和其他基金上投资了约4.6万亿元人民币。它们还向地方政府项目提供贷款，现在中国各地的城市和省份都在努力偿还债务，据估计，到2022年底，这些债务已达到57万亿元。

There is another avenue through which trouble may spread. Zhongrong is controlled by a much larger investment manager, called Zhongzhi, which has about 1trn yuan in assets under management across a vast array of divisions. Zhongzhi has also been thrown into a liquidity crisis and has reportedly been unable to pay out the 230bn yuan it owes to some 150,000 wealthy investors. Across the country, similar investment-management firms have millions of customers. Since news of Zhongzhi’s troubles broke, phones have been ringing off the hook as worried clients, many of whom are regular white-collar workers, seek to confirm their savings are safe, reports an executive at another one of these companies.
还有另一条途径可能会使麻烦蔓延。中融由一家规模大得多的投资管理公司中植控股，该公司管理着约1万亿元人民币的资产，横跨众多部门。中植集团也陷入了流动性危机，据报道，中植集团已无力偿还欠约15万名富有投资者的2300亿元债务。在全国各地，类似的投资管理公司拥有数百万客户。另一家此类公司的一位高管表示，自从中植集团陷入困境的消息传出以来，电话一直响个不停，忧心忡忡的客户（其中许多是普通白领）试图确认自己的储蓄是否安全。

Such links between trusts, local governments and developers, and the possibility of larger financial firms getting in trouble, have spooked investors. Indeed, Zhongrong’s troubles have contributed to the poor performance of the Chinese stockmarket: the csi 300, a benchmark index, is down by more than 6% this month. Interventions by officials, which included a cut to stamp duty on August 27th, have had little impact.
信托、地方政府和开发商之间的这种联系，以及大型金融公司陷入困境的可能性，令投资者感到恐慌。事实上，中融的麻烦是中国股市表现不佳的原因之一：基准股指沪深300指数本月下跌逾6%。官员们的干预措施，包括8月27日下调印花税，收效甚微。

Policymakers are painfully aware of the problems faced by trusts. After all, they helped bring many of them into being through attempts to reduce risk. Since 2017 China’s shadow banks have been under intense regulatory scrutiny as part of an attempt to transfer opaque off-balance-sheet lending to banks. The official attack was ramped up in 2020 when the state introduced sharp restrictions on leverage at property developers. As a result of such moves, the issuance of shadow-banking products in the first half of this year was at its weakest in a decade, according to Capital Economics, a research firm. The crackdown has sapped liquidity and confidence from the property market, pushing both developers and trust firms towards default.
政策制定者痛苦地意识到信托所面临的问题。毕竟，他们通过降低风险的尝试帮助实现了许多目标。自2017年以来，中国的影子银行一直受到严格的监管审查，这是将不透明的表外贷款转移到银行的尝试的一部分。2020年，国家对房地产开发商的杠杆率进行了严格限制，官方的打击力度加大。根据研究公司凯投宏观（Capital Economics）的数据，由于这些举措，今年上半年影子银行产品的发行量处于10年来的最低水平。打击房地产市场的行动削弱了房地产市场的流动性和信心，将开发商和信托公司推向违约。

In the short term, much of the pain will be borne by wealthy investors, as the threshold for putting money into a trust product is usually more than 300,000 yuan. Most cannot even demand their initial investments back, since products usually have terms that prevent investors from withdrawing, sometimes for up to two years. This may prevent a fully fledged financial crisis caused by a run on shadow lenders, and will give the government time to reckon with the mess. Bloomberg, a news service, has reported that China’s banking regulator has already set up a task force to examine the problems at Zhongzhi. Yet, given the vast, shadowy connections such firms have across the economy, government inspectors might not like what they find. ■
从短期来看，大部分痛苦将由富有的投资者承担，因为将资金投入信托产品的门槛通常在30万元以上。大多数人甚至无法要求收回他们最初的投资，因为产品通常有防止投资者退出的条款，有时长达两年。这可能会防止影子银行挤兑引发的全面金融危机，并给予政府时间来应对混乱局面。彭博新闻社报道称，中国银行业监管机构已经成立了一个特别工作组来调查中植集团的问题。然而，考虑到这些公司在整个经济中存在的巨大而阴暗的联系，政府检查人员可能不会喜欢他们的发现。■