Lex专栏：中国在线银行的位置

In financial services, the label “transformative” often fades to “disappointing”. Would-be disrupters, ranging from peer-to-peer lenders in the west to China’s new online banks, risk co-option by incumbents looking for new sales outlets. A particular challenge for Chinese challengers is that the authorities may prevent them making too many waves.

在金融服务这一行，“变革型”这个标签到头来往往褪色，变成“令人失望”。从西方的P2P贷款机构到中国新生的在线银行，潜在的颠覆者有可能被寻觅新销售渠道的老牌机构拉拢。对中国的挑战者来说，一个特别挑战是当局可能阻止他们引发太多涟漪。

China’s banking regulator has unveiled results to the end of September for the country’s first five officially sanctioned, privately owned banks licensed during 2014. The rhetoric is encouraging enough. The authorities praised the newcomers for extending financial services to under-serviced parts of the economy, such as small and medium enterprises. The numbers were not bad, either. Perhaps surprisingly, given their short history, the five were profitable in aggregate, if only just. Assets have also grown quickly, to nearly $20bn.

中国银行业监管机构公布了2014年获得正式批准的首批5家民营银行截至今年9月底的结果。措辞相当令人鼓舞。当局称赞新来者把金融服务带到服务不足的经济部门，如中小企业。数字也不错。也许令人惊讶的是，虽然这5家银行成立不久，但它们整体上是盈利的，即便只是勉强如此。资产也实现了快速增长，已达到近200亿美元。

Despite these rapid strides, anyone hoping for a shake-up of the sector will be disappointed. Against a Chinese banking asset base of more than $30tn, the new operators — which include WeBank (backed by Tencent) and MYBank (30 per cent owned by Ant Financial, Alibaba’s finance affiliate) — are tiny. Their impact on mighty rivals has thus been negligible. There is little worry that they will start eating into the incumbents’ share. For the new banks, loans are less than half of the assets; credit creation has been slow.

尽管有这些快速的进展，但是任何人如果希望中国银行业发生重大变化都会失望。相对于中国银行业超过30万亿美元的资产基础，新的银行——包括腾讯(Tencent)支持的微众银行(WeBank)，以及由阿里巴巴(Alibaba)旗下的金融附属公司蚂蚁金服(Ant Financial)持30%股份的网商银行(MYBank)——在规模上微不足道。因此，它们对强大对手的影响迄今可忽略不计。没人担心它们将开始侵蚀老牌银行的市场份额。就这几家新银行而言，贷款不到资产的一半;信贷创造迄今缓慢。

Perhaps this was always the plan. The regulator’s statement, while heralding the role of the debutantes in extending financial services, also seemed to suggest they are not really meant to shake things up. They are to stick to their place: supplementing the system rather than transforming it. An extension to the conspiracy theory is that it suits the authorities for the private sector to shoulder new lending risks. State-owned banks are already burdened with old ones. Any failures would be a blot on someone else’s balance sheet.

也许这种格局一直就是计划的一部分。监管机构的声明尽管肯定新银行在延伸金融服务方面起到的作用，但似乎也表明，当局并不真的要让它们撼动现状。它们需要固守自己的位置：补充银行体系，而不是去改变它。这一“阴谋论”的一个延伸观点是，让私营部门承担新的贷款风险恰好适合当局的需要。国有银行已经背着老的贷款风险的重担。任何失败将是别人的资产负债表上的一个污点。