| 双语新闻 Bilingual News | 双语对照阅读 分级系列阅读 智能辅助阅读 在线英语学习 |
|
| 双语新闻 Bilingual News | 双语对照阅读 分级系列阅读 智能辅助阅读 在线英语学习 |
| [英文] [中文] [双语对照] [双语交替] [] |
| China’s giant banking system, the world’s largest, is heavily exposed to the real estate crisis: Nearly 40 percent of all bank loans are related to property. And pressure is building on those banks as dozens of real estate developers have defaulted or missed payments on overseas bonds, led by China Evergrande, the world’s most indebted developer. | 中国庞大的银行体系是世界上最大的银行系统，对房地产危机存有巨大敞口：其近40%的银行贷款与房地产有关。先是世界上负债最多的开发商中国恒大，之后是数十家房地产开发商拖欠或无法偿还海外债券，银行面临的压力越来越大。 |
| The scale of China’s property problems — enormous levels of debt, an oversupply of apartments and consumers increasingly wary of buying — means the government could be forced in the coming years to spend huge sums of money bailing out banks. | 中国房地产问题的规模——巨额债务、住房供过于求，以及消费者对购房越来越谨慎——意味着政府可能在未来几年被迫花费巨额资金救助银行。 |
| Officials in Beijing have already taken some steps, underlining the difficult choices the real estate debt poses for policymakers. They have, for example, allowed banks to give extra time to borrowers before their loans come due, a step that risks doing little but kick the problem down the road. Yet that may send the message that both borrowers and lenders can continue pursuing incautious practices in the expectation of a bailout. And it delays the day when banks can lend to more productive ventures. | 北京官员已经采取了一些措施，突显出房地产债务给政策制定者带来的艰难选择。例如，他们允许银行在贷款到期前给借款人更多的时间，这一举措可能收效甚微，只会把问题推到未来。然而，这可能传递出这样一个信息：借款人和贷款人都可以继续采取不谨慎的做法，以期获得救助。而且，这也会让银行迟迟不能开始向生产率更高的企业放贷。 |
| “If China fails to order the banks to write off bad loans in the property market, interest costs will continue to chip away at the economy, while too much capital will continue to be wasted on investments with no value,” said Andrew Collier, founder and managing director of Orient Capital, an economic research firm in Hong Kong. | 香港经济研究公司东方融资的创始人兼董事总经理安德鲁·科利尔说，“如果中国不能命令银行冲销房地产市场的不良贷款，利息成本将继续侵蚀经济，而过多的资本将继续浪费在没有价值的投资上。” |
| Still, almost no one expects falling real estate prices in China to set off an out-of-control string of large bank collapses, similar to what the United States endured 15 years ago. China’s banking system, holding four-fifths of the country’s financial assets including most of the bonds, is far too big for the government to let fail. | 尽管如此，几乎没有人认为中国不断下跌的房地产价格会像15年前的美国那样引发一系列大型银行失控倒闭。中国的银行系统持有全国五分之四的金融资产，包括大部分债券，其规模太大，政府无法任其倒闭。 |
| The government directly or indirectly holds controlling stakes in practically all banks, giving it a powerful say over their fate even beyond having extensive regulatory powers. China’s financial system relies mostly on bank loans of a year or more, unlike the tradable securities that quickly tumbled in value in 2008, setting off the global financial meltdown. And regulators block most large movements of money in and out of the country, making China’s financial system nearly invulnerable to the kind of sudden departure of foreign money that touched off the Asian financial crisis in nearby countries in 1997 and 1998. | 政府直接或间接地持有几乎所有银行的控股权，因此，除了拥有广泛的监管权力之外，它也可以在很大程度上左右银行的命运。中国的金融体系主要依赖一年或一年以上的银行贷款，不是2008年迅速贬值、引发全球金融危机的可交易证券。监管机构还阻止了大部分的大宗资金进出中国，这使得中国的金融体系几乎不受外国资金突然撤离的影响，1997年和1998年的亚洲金融危机就是由这种情况在中国周边国家引发的。 |
| But the current troubles in Chinese real estate, which have their roots in years of wild lending and speculative overinvestment, pose a formidable challenge for policymakers. | 但中国房地产目前的问题根源在于多年来的疯狂放贷和投机性过度投资，这给政策制定者带来了巨大挑战。 |
| Shortly before stepping down last March, Liu He, then China’s vice premier, warned in a speech of the dangers that real estate holds for China. | 今年3月卸任前不久，时任中国副总理的刘鹤在一次讲话中警告说，房地产给中国带来了危险。 |
| “If not handled properly, risks in the housing sector are likely to trigger systemic risks — that is why prompt steps must be taken to address them,” he told the World Economic Forum in January in Davos, Switzerland. | “房地产领域风险如果处置不当，很容易引发系统性风险，必须及时干预，”他在1月份于瑞士达沃斯举行的世界经济论坛上表示。 |
| In interviews in recent weeks, four people in Beijing and Shanghai with knowledge of Chinese financial regulatory actions provided a detailed view of how regulators are trying to cope with risks related to real estate. All insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. | 在最近几周的采访中，四位了解中国金融监管行动的北京和上海人士详细介绍了监管机构如何努力应对与房地产相关的风险。所有人都要求匿名，因为他们没有被授权公开发表评论。 |
| For one thing, China’s regulators are giving banks much more leeway for when they declare loans to be nonperforming, meaning the borrower can’t make payments. That has allowed banks to delay having to report financial losses. | 首先，中国监管机构在不良贷款（即借款人无法偿还贷款）的判定上给了银行很大的裁量权。这使得银行可以推迟上报财务损失的时间。 |
| The policy of allowing banks to extend repayment deadlines for loans that debtors have trouble repaying actually started during the pandemic, the people familiar with the regulatory system said. That policy was intended to give banks wiggle room in dealing with companies that suffered nose dives in sales because of Covid outbreaks or lockdowns, without forcing the banks to set aside extra money for nonperforming loans. But this leniency has continued into this year and been applied to the far larger and deeply troubled real estate sector. | 熟悉监管体系的人士说，允许银行在债务人难以偿还贷款时予以展期的政策实际上始于疫情期间。该政策旨在让银行在处理因疫情或封锁而销售额暴跌的公司时提供回旋余地，不会迫使银行为不良贷款预留额外资金。但这种宽松政策一直延续到今年，并应用于规模大得多、问题更严重的房地产行业。 |
| In addition, China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, has conducted an elaborate stress test on the balance sheets of China’s 20 largest commercial banks, said three of the people, to ensure their resilience in case of further real estate losses. | 此外，其中三位知情人士表示，中国央行中国人民银行对中国20家最大商业银行的资产负债表进行了详尽的压力测试，以确保它们在房地产进一步损失的情况下具有抵御风险的能力。 |
| The stress test, conducted last winter, found that the banks, all of which are state controlled, could survive considerable further deterioration of China’s real estate market, the three people said. But at least half might require additional capital to make sure that they would continue to meet ever-tightening international standards for how much money they keep in reserve. | 上述三位人士表示，去年冬天进行的压力测试发现，这些银行（全部是国有银行）能在中国房地产市场进一步大幅恶化的情况下生存下来。但至少有一半的银行可能需要额外的资本，以确保它们能够继续满足日益收紧的国际储备资金标准。 |
| Acting separately from China’s central bank, central banks in Europe have set up a working group to collect and share information on how much money their countries’ commercial banks have lent in China, although so far they have found little exposure. | 欧洲各国央行也成立了一个工作组，自行收集和分享各自国家商业银行在中国放贷的信息，尽管迄今为止，它们还没有发现什么风险敞口。 |
| A key part of China’s strategy is to spread out the cost of handling real estate losses over more years, these people said. That could allow the banks to use potential future profits on other loans to offset losses on loans to real estate developers. | 这些人士说，中国战略的一个关键部分是，将处理房地产损失的成本分摊到更长的时间里。这可能使银行能够利用其他贷款的潜在未来利润，抵消房地产开发商贷款的损失。 |
| Nearly half of real estate-related lending in China consists of mortgages, mainly residential. Losses on mortgages are practically nonexistent as homeowners pay them on time or even early. | 中国近一半的房地产相关贷款是抵押贷款，主要是住宅贷款。由于房主按时甚至提前还款，抵押贷款的损失几乎不存在。 |
| China has long required far higher down payments than Western regulators — at least 20 or 30 percent of the purchase price for first-time home buyers, and as high as 70 percent for second homes. | 长期以来，中国对首付款的要求远高于西方监管机构——首次购房者的首付款比例至少为购房价格的20%或30%，第二套住房的首付款比例高达70%。 |
| Households almost never default on mortgages, to avoid losing their down payments. So these loans have consistently been very profitable for commercial banks, which charge interest rates that are a couple of percentage points higher than the banks pay their depositors. The government has recently urged banks to reduce interest rates on mortgages to help households free up cash to spend, but banks have resisted doing so. | 为避免损失首付款，家庭几乎从不拖欠抵押贷款。因此，这些贷款对商业银行来说一直是丰厚的利润，它们收取的利率比银行支付给储户的利率高出几个百分点。政府最近敦促银行降低抵押贷款利率，帮助家庭腾出现金用于消费，但银行拒绝这样做。 |
| Loans to property developers are the biggest worry for commercial banks and regulators, but their role in banks’ overall finances is limited — Mr. Collier, the analyst in Hong Kong, estimated them at 6 to 7 percent of bank lending. China’s banks, with their strong government links, have influence to demand repayment from developers. | 对房地产开发商的贷款是商业银行和监管机构最担心的问题，但它们在银行整体财务中的作用是有限的——香港分析师科利尔估计，这些贷款占银行贷款的6%到7%。中国的银行与政府联系紧密，在要求开发商还款方面具有影响力。 |
| The other troubled category of customers for China’s banks lies in financial affiliates of local governments, which borrow money on behalf of local governments. The local affiliates have borrowed twice as much from banks as the country’s real estate developers. | 中国银行面临的另一类问题客户是地方政府的金融附属机构，它们代表地方政府借款。这些机构从银行借的钱是全国房地产开发商的两倍。 |
| The affiliates are almost all involved in real estate development and associated activities, like building roads, bridges and other infrastructure. They have spent heavily to buy land at local governments’ auctions as private-sector developers have run out of money to bid. Now the financial affiliates face heavy losses — but since they and the banks are ultimately controlled by Beijing, the problem moves slowly. | 它们几乎都涉及房地产开发和相关活动，比如修建道路、桥梁和其他基础设施。由于私营开发商没有资金竞标，它们可以在地方政府的拍卖会上斥巨资购买土地。如今，这些金融附属机构面临着严重亏损——但由于它们和银行最终都由北京控制，因此问题进展缓慢。 |
| Banks, real estate developers and local governments are all hoping that Beijing will eventually help them. But the national government has shown scant enthusiasm so far. | 银行、房地产开发商和地方政府都希望北京最终会出手相助。但到目前为止，中央政府并没有表现出多少热情。 |
| “The system is carrying this forward, waiting and waiting and waiting for some kind of bailout, and it has not come,” said Lester Ross, managing partner of the Beijing office of the Wilmer Hale law firm. | “整个系统在拖着，”威凯平和而德律师事务所北京办事处执行合伙人莱斯特·罗斯表示，“一直在等待，等待，等待某种纾困，但至今也没等来。” |
OK阅读网 版权所有(C)2017 | 联系我们