美国国家公共电台 NPR How Hong Kong's Banks Turned Chinese

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

China is marking an anniversary this week - the 20th anniversary of Britain's handover of Hong Kong to Chinese control. That was a big moment in China's rise. And today, China can also celebrate the takeover of the city's lucrative¹ financial sector². NPR's Rob Schmitz reports.

(SOUNDBITE OF CROSSWALK SIGNALS)

ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE³: Hong Kong, where the city's ubiquitous crosswalk signals sound like slot machines, directing thousands of white-shirted bank employees to work each morning. Twenty years ago, the traders and account managers crossing these streets were mostly expatriates and local Hong Kongers. When they got to work, much of their business was done in English. That's changed.

WILLIAM HON: Actually, Hong Kong is shifting its role from Asia financial center to supporting the growth of China.

SCHMITZ: William Hon works for Liquidnet, a U.S. equity⁴ broker⁵. He was born and grew up in Hong Kong, but at the office, he's finding more and more of his colleagues are from mainland China.

HON: More and more Chinese companies would like to list in Hong Kong exchange. So they are all in China, and they are talk - they're talking Mandarin⁶. So they need more fluent Mandarin speaker in Hong Kong, or they hire people from China to work in Hong Kong so that they can, you know, communicate and talk, you know, effectively.

SCHMITZ: And that means a sea change is underway for the job prospects⁷ of young Hong Kongers, says Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital.

ANDREW COLLIER: It used to be that you got out of college in Hong Kong, and you were an invaluable⁸ resource because you had some sort of Mandarin skills, you spoke⁹ English. And you were trained in finance. And you had no competition.

SCHMITZ: Now, says Collier, that Hong Kong native is facing competition from even better-trained and harder-working mainland Chinese candidates.

COLLIER: A lot of them are moving from one province, where they went to get to their undergraduate degree. They may have gotten to graduate school, or even university, in another place like Beijing and Shanghai - thousands of miles away. And then if they speak English well, they would have been trained - additional training, schooling¹⁰ or work in London or New York or Chicago or someplace like that. So by the time they come to Hong Kong, they're very, very sophisticated about how the world works.

SCHMITZ: There are people like Weiqi Zhu, a derivatives¹¹ trader at UBS in Hong Kong. Zhu grew up middle class in Shanghai, studied hard and ended up pursuing a Ph.D. in finance at Cornell University. He estimates Hong Kongers now make up only 5 to 10 percent of his department, whereas mainland Chinese like him make up around a third.

WEIQI ZHU: You need people who know mainland clients. You need people who knows, like, what to do to make money in China. You need to - people to know the rules - the financial rules in China and to know how you can make more money by knowing the rules.

SCHMITZ: Zhu remembers 20 years ago whenever Hong Kongers visited his hometown, he and his friends saw them as gods. Now, here on the trading floor in Hong Kong, he says, they're more like servants.

(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)

SCHMITZ: Three years ago, Hong Kong's financial district was paralyzed for three months from protests calling for greater political rights. But Orient Capital's Andrew Collier says those protests were just as much about economic rights.

COLLIER: The people doing Occupy didn't explicitly¹² say it was about economic issues. But if you talk to them, they are definitely feeling threatened economically. And I think if their attitude is, if we don't have the vote, and we don't have access to the economic system the way we used to, then we have nothing to lose.

SCHMITZ: But that's not the attitude of William Hon, the trader who grew up in Hong Kong. He's focused on improving his Mandarin.

HON: In the future, I can foresee that more and more Chinese clients are coming over to us or to other banks. So I have to adapt to this - so improving the Mandarin, adapting to Chinese culture, you know, to talk to them and get more business.

SCHMITZ: Hon says he'll never change his political beliefs, but when it comes to business, if you can't beat them, join them. Rob Schmitz, NPR News, Hong Kong.

1 lucrative   

adj.赚钱的，可获利的

参考例句：

• He decided to turn his hobby into a lucrative sideline.他决定把自己的爱好变成赚钱的副业。
• It was not a lucrative profession.那是一个没有多少油水的职业。

2 sector   

n.部门，部分；防御地段，防区；扇形

参考例句：

• The export sector will aid the economic recovery. 出口产业将促进经济复苏。
• The enemy have attacked the British sector.敌人已进攻英国防区。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 equity   

n.公正，公平，（无固定利息的）股票

参考例句：

• They shared the work of the house with equity.他们公平地分担家务。
• To capture his equity,Murphy must either sell or refinance.要获得资产净值，墨菲必须出售或者重新融资。

5 broker   

n.中间人，经纪人；v.作为中间人来安排

参考例句：

• He baited the broker by promises of higher commissions.他答应给更高的佣金来引诱那位经纪人。
• I'm a real estate broker.我是不动产经纪人。

6 Mandarin   

n.中国官话，国语，满清官吏；adj.华丽辞藻的

参考例句：

• Just over one billion people speak Mandarin as their native tongue.大约有十亿以上的人口以华语为母语。
• Mandarin will be the new official language of the European Union.普通话会变成欧盟新的官方语言。

7 prospects   

n.希望，前途(恒为复数)

参考例句：

• There is a mood of pessimism in the company about future job prospects. 公司中有一种对工作前景悲观的情绪。
• They are less sanguine about the company's long-term prospects. 他们对公司的远景不那么乐观。

8 invaluable   

adj.无价的，非常宝贵的，极为贵重的

参考例句：

• A computer would have been invaluable for this job.一台计算机对这个工作的作用会是无法估计的。
• This information was invaluable to him.这个消息对他来说是非常宝贵的。

9 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

10 schooling   

n.教育；正规学校教育

参考例句：

• A child's access to schooling varies greatly from area to area.孩子获得学校教育的机会因地区不同而大相径庭。
• Backward children need a special kind of schooling.天赋差的孩子需要特殊的教育。

11 derivatives   

n.衍生性金融商品；派生物，引出物( derivative的名词复数 )；导数

参考例句：

• Many English words are derivatives of Latin words. 许多英语词来自拉丁语。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• These compounds are nitrosohydroxylamine derivatives. 这类合成物是亚硝基羟胺衍生物。 来自辞典例句

12 explicitly   

ad.明确地，显然地

参考例句：

• The plan does not explicitly endorse the private ownership of land. 该计划没有明确地支持土地私有制。
• SARA amended section 113 to provide explicitly for a right to contribution. 《最高基金修正与再授权法案》修正了第123条，清楚地规定了分配权。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法