中国公债

　　Coming clean

　　快要清零了

　　China faces up to the hidden debts of itslocal governments

　　中国勇敢面对地方政府的隐藏债务

　　BANKS in Westerncountries dragged their economies into the great recession. Banks in Chinapulled the country out of it. Much of the Chinese government’s stimulus effortfrom 2008 to 2010 was left to financial institutions, which proved better at shovingmoney out of the door than America’s federal government.

　　西方国家的银行将经济拉到一个大衰退中，而中国的银行却将这个国家拽出这个泥淖。2008年到2010年间中国政府间的刺激计划都交给金融机构执行，相比美国联邦政府，中国的这一做法在贷款方面要更有效。

　　The banks lent tothousands of investment corporations set up by local governments, which cannotborrow in their own name. With the help of some initial capital and collateral,like land, these investment vehicles directed the lending into local bridges,tunnels and real-estate ventures. But many of the loans have turned bad,threatening the balance-sheets of the banks that made them.

　　银行贷款给地方政府成立的数以千计的投资公司，这是因为地方政府不能以自己的名义贷款。凭借着初始资金和诸如土地之类的抵押物，这些投资机器把这些贷款投资建设当地的桥梁、隧道以及房地产行业。但是很多贷款最后变成了坏账，搞得银行的资产负债表很不好看。

　　Now the centralgovernment has at last resolved to clean up the mess, according to unnamedofficials cited by Reuters this week. China’s government will consolidatethousands of investment vehicles and hive off some of their debts into separatecompanies open to private investors. It will force the banks to write offanother slice of the bad debt, and repay a chunk of it from its own budget.Much of the stimulus lending of 2008-10 may turn out to be public spending after all.

　　据路透社报道，一名不愿意透露姓名的官员说，中央政府终于下定决心收拾这个烂摊子。中国政府将合并数以千计的投资公司，将一部分债务分离到独立公司，并且对私人投资商开放。当局将强迫银行注销另一部分坏账，并用银行自身的预算填补这个大缺口。2008年到2010年间的多数刺激性贷款最终可能会变成公共事务支出。

　　The government hasnever revealed how much debt the local-government vehicles took on. Despitethis opacity, or perhaps because of it, these hidden liabilities have becomeone of the four big worries haunting China-watchers, along with the propertybubble, inflation and lightly regulated trust companies. Victor Shih of Northwestern University has described the debts as a“big rock-candy mountain”. In June 2010, he projected it might reach as high as24 trillion yuan ($3.7 trillion) by the end of 2012, or over half of China’sGDP.

　　政府永不打算公布地方政府借贷的规模。不管是不是因为这样的不透明，这些隐藏的债务已经成为萦绕在中国问题专家脑子里的四大担忧之一，其余三个分别是资产泡沫、通胀和管理松散的信托公司。西北大学的维克多·史吧这个债务描述成一座“巨大的冰糖山”。2010年6月，他预测这笔债务到2012年底将达到24万亿人民币（相当于3.7万亿美元），或将超过中国GDP的一半。

　　But the centralgovernment itself now reckons the debts amount to 10 trillion yuan, accordingto an official cited by Reuters—a quarter of GDP. That is bigger than America’s state and local-government debt (18%)but the same as India’s(25%).

　　但根据那名官员向路透社透露的信息，中央政府自己预测的债务是10万亿人民币——GDP的四分之一。这一数字超过了美国各州及地方政府的债务比例（18%），与同样是25%的印度持平。

　　Not all of this 10 trillion yuan will go bad. Somelocal-government investments will prove “bankable” in the strict sense that theborrower captures a big enough return to repay the loan. An analysis by the

　　21stCentury Business Herald, a Chinese newspaper, suggests that only28% of the loans have failed to generate much cashflow. In other cases, the social benefits of a project might exceed the costs, even though the benefits do not accrue to the local government itself—especially if the people employed would otherwise have stood idle.

　　这10万亿人民币并不全是坏账。一些地方政府将证明自己的投资是可盈利的，也就是说严格意义上，借款人可以锁定一个足够多的收益用于还贷。中国的一份报纸《21世纪经济报道》所做的分析按时，只有28%的贷款没能产生足够的现金流。另一方面，即使这些收益并不能让地方政府收益——特别如果政府人浮于事，效率低下，项目的社会效益仍有可能会大于投入。

　　But could Chinaafford the stimulus? The official public debt of the central government wasonly 19% of GDP at the end of 2010. Adding the debts of local governments, thenon-performing loans of the banks and other liabilities, such as central-bankbills, the public debt amounts to about 80% of GDP according to Andrew Batsonand Janet Zhang of GaveKalDragonomics, a consultancy in Beijing. That sounds high for a developingcountry. But like India’ssimilar debt burden (73% of GDP), the liabilities are mostly denominated in thecountry’s own currency and held domestically, often by docile institutions,such as state banks. “The only entities that could trigger a crisis ofconfidence in government debt are themselves owned by the government,” theysay. China’spublic finances may not be as sweet as they appeared, but they are not sour.

　　但是，中国能负担的起这种经济刺激计划吗？中央政府2010年底所公布的官方公共债务仅为GDP的19%。根据北京一家名为GaveKalDragonomics咨询公司咨询师安德鲁·巴森和珍妮特·张的估算，如果加上地方政府的债务、银行石沉大海的贷款和其他欠款，如中央银行的票据等，公共债务将达到GDP的80%。这个数字对于一个发展中国家来说太高了。但是就如同印度相似的债务负担（GDP的73%）一样，这些债务都以本国货币计值并且通常由易于控制的机构来持有，比如国有银行。“唯一可以引发政府债务信任危机的就是这些债务本身”。中国的公共财政可能并不像他们所表现得那么优质，但也绝不差劲。