2021年经济学人 中国做大金融开放蛋糕,不再担心"狼来了"(2)

Banks, despite their conservative exterior¹, had a big hand in shadow financing. They got around caps on deposit rates by funnelling² savings³ into opaque⁴ "wealth-management products", a chunk⁵ of which flowed through the shadow firms. Some of these products offered yields of over 10%. Yet they enjoyed informal guarantees from the state-owned banks, making investors⁶ think that they were as safe as deposits. The shadow-banking industry grew to 28.5% of banks' total assets in 2016.

银行虽然表面上保守，但其实深度参与了影子融资。它们绕过存款利率上限这一障碍，把储户存款注入不透明的“理财产品”，其中的大头流入了影子金融公司。其中一些产品的收益率超过10％。但它们还享有国有银行的非正式担保，让投资者认为它们和存款一样安全。2016年，影子银行业务规模增至占银行业总资产的28.5％。

Around that time a series of messy defaults alerted regulators to the dangers. They began a campaign to unwind the shadow financing. They forced trust companies to hold more capital. They stopped banks from offering guarantees on wealth products. And they opened the door to a new professional fund industry, pressing banks to launch formal wealth-management subsidiaries, rather like asset-management groups in developed markets.

大约就在那时，一系列的违约乱象让监管部门意识到了其中的风险。它们开始展开一场去影子运动。它们要求信托公司提高资本金，禁止银行为理财产品提供担保，为一个新的专业化的基金行业打开大门，要求银行成立正式的理财子公司，就像发达市场的那些资产管理集团那样。

Banks are barred from investing in equities⁷ but the new divisions face no such rules. They cannot, however, offer guarantees. Contracts specify⁸ that in a downturn investors will face losses. Some banks' wealth units manage their own funds; others team up with outside managers. Much of the money flows into the stockmarket.

银行被禁止投资股市，而新设的理财子公司不受这些限制。不过理财子公司不能提供担保。合同写明，市场下跌时，投资者将面临损失。有一些银行的理财子公司管理自己的基金，也有一些与外部财富管理公司合作。这些资金有很大一部分流入了股市。

The ubiquity of mobile payments has given ordinary people another route to funds. With a few taps users of Alipay or WeChat Pay can choose from hundreds of products. China's 100m or so retail⁹ punters have long believed that they can beat professional investors. But that sentiment has shifted over the past two years and many are now buying into mutual¹⁰ funds at record pace, says Desiree Wang of JPMorgan Asset Management. Much as retail investors have been vocal¹¹ on social media about the performance of individual stocks, they now debate, laud¹² and criticise¹³ the performance of the country's top fund managers.

移动支付的普及给老百姓提供了又一条投资基金的途径。只消点击几下手机屏幕，支付宝或微信支付的用户就可以在成百上千种产品里做选择。中国约有一亿散户投资者，他们一直自以为能打败专业投资者。但过去两年，这种观念发生了转变，许多人现在正以破纪录的速度买入共同基金，摩根资产管理公司的王琼慧表示。散户投资者过去在社交媒体上大谈个股表现，同样，他们现在也会辩论和褒贬国内顶级基金经理的业绩。

Funds are also becoming more sophisticated. Since the global financial crisis a stream of Chinese nationals has returned to Hong Kong and Shanghai from London and New York, bringing a new set of skills, says Louis Luo of Aberdeen Standard Investments, an asset manager. Funds once limited to plain-vanilla active management have brought in specialists to launch quantitative¹⁴ and absolute-return funds.

基金也变得更为复杂。安本标准投资管理（Aberdeen Standard Investments）的罗勋表示，自全球金融危机以来，大批中国人从伦敦和纽约回流香港和上海，带来一系列新技能。以往只做简单的主动管理的基金公司现在聘雇专家来推出量化绝对收益基金。

These trends have been magnified at China's big mutual funds. Three of the largest mutual-fund companies—China Asset Management, e-Fund and Southern Asset Management—have each surpassed 1trn yuan in assets under management. The rate of growth at mutual funds and at the banks' wealth-management arms is projected to take professionally managed assets in China from around 96trn yuan ($14.7trn) in 2020 to 244trn yuan in 2029, or near the current size of the asset-management industry in America.

这些趋势在中国大型共同基金公司中更加突显。华夏基金、易方达基金和南方基金是中国三大共同基金公司，管理的资产规模均超过了一万亿元。按照共同基金和银行理财子公司的增长速度，预计到2029年，中国由专业机构管理的资产将从2020年的约96万亿元增长到244万亿元，接近美国的资产管理行业目前的规模。

1 exterior   

adj.外部的，外在的；表面的

参考例句：

• The seed has a hard exterior covering.这种子外壳很硬。
• We are painting the exterior wall of the house.我们正在给房子的外墙涂漆。

2 funnelling   

倾销( funnel的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Wind was funnelling through the gorge. 风吹过峡谷。
• This causes a funnelling from Asian currencies into dollars and euros. 这导致了一种从亚洲货币到美圆和欧元的漏斗效应。

3 savings   

n.存款，储蓄

参考例句：

• I can't afford the vacation,for it would eat up my savings.我度不起假，那样会把我的积蓄用光的。
• By this time he had used up all his savings.到这时，他的存款已全部用完。

4 opaque   

adj.不透光的；不反光的，不传导的；晦涩的

参考例句：

• The windows are of opaque glass.这些窗户装着不透明玻璃。
• Their intentions remained opaque.他们的意图仍然令人费解。

5 chunk   

n.厚片，大块，相当大的部分（数量）

参考例句：

• They had to be careful of floating chunks of ice.他们必须当心大块浮冰。
• The company owns a chunk of farmland near Gatwick Airport.该公司拥有盖特威克机场周边的大片农田。

6 investors   

n.投资者，出资者( investor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a con man who bilked investors out of millions of dollars 诈取投资者几百万元的骗子
• a cash bonanza for investors 投资者的赚钱机会

7 equities   

普通股，股票

参考例句：

• These are invested mainly in the OECD bonds and equities. 这些资产主要投资于经济合作及发展组织的债券与股票市场。
• They are also advantage of the global rebound in equities. 它们还在利用全球股市反弹的机会。

8 specify   

vt.指定，详细说明

参考例句：

• We should specify a time and a place for the meeting.我们应指定会议的时间和地点。
• Please specify what you will do.请你详述一下你将做什么。

9 retail   

v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格

参考例句：

• In this shop they retail tobacco and sweets.这家铺子零售香烟和糖果。
• These shoes retail at 10 yuan a pair.这些鞋子零卖10元一双。

10 mutual   

adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的

参考例句：

• We must pull together for mutual interest.我们必须为相互的利益而通力合作。
• Mutual interests tied us together.相互的利害关系把我们联系在一起。

11 vocal   

adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目

参考例句：

• The tongue is a vocal organ.舌头是一个发音器官。
• Public opinion at last became vocal.终于舆论哗然。

12 laud   

n.颂歌；v.赞美

参考例句：

• Kathy was very pleased to have graduated cum laud in her class.凯西在班上以优等成绩毕业，她为此而非常高兴。
• We laud him a warmhearted man.我们称赞他是个热心人。

13 criticise   

v.批评，评论；非难

参考例句：

• Right and left have much cause to criticise government.左翼和右翼有很多理由批评政府。
• It is not your place to criticise or suggest improvements!提出批评或给予改进建议并不是你的责任！

14 quantitative   

adj.数量的，定量的

参考例句：

• He said it was only a quantitative difference.他说这仅仅是数量上的差别。
• We need to do some quantitative analysis of the drugs.我们对药物要进行定量分析。