中国试图控制债务，信贷紧缩却伤害了经济

SHANGHAI — China’s government has been trying to break the country’s addiction to ever-rising debt, but its effort to crack down on easy money is starting to hit growth in the world’s second-biggest economy.

上海——中国政府一直试图打破对不断增长的债务的依赖，但其打击宽松货币的行动已开始影响这个全球第二大经济体的增长。

Beijing has been concerned in recent years about the increased reliance on credit to keep the economy expanding briskly, worrying that it could lead to a financial crisis, or to a long period of stagnation like the one in Japan after the real estate market burst in the early 1990s.

近年来，北京一直对越来越依赖信贷保持经济快速增长的情况感到不安，担心可能会引发金融危机或长期停滞，就像90年代初日本在房地产市场崩盘后发生的那样。

But curbing debt may have significant consequences in China and elsewhere. Countries around the world are much more closely tied to China than ever before, because of its role not just as the world’s biggest manufacturer by far but also, increasingly, as a consumer. An economic slowdown in China — coupled with the knock-on effects of widening trade disputes and slowing growth in Europe — may augur poorly for a global economy that even recently seemed in rude health.

但控制债务可能会在中国和其他地方产生严重影响。如今，世界各国与中国的联系比以往任何时候都更紧密，因为它不仅是迄今为止全球最大的制造国，而且越来越多地扮演起了消费国的角色。虽然全球经济最近似乎相当健康，但中国经济放缓，连同贸易争端扩大和欧洲增长放缓的连锁效应，对全球经济来说可能是个不好的兆头。

Domestically, China’s credit crackdown has affected smaller businesses hardest. Though the country often appears to be dominated by its vast conglomerates and hulking state-owned enterprises, its economy is, in reality, somewhat more reliant on small businesses than its Western counterparts. And the way Beijing has gone about curbing lending in recent months is unintentionally hitting the most entrepreneurial segments of the economy, the governor of China’s central bank acknowledged in a speech on Thursday in Shanghai.

在国内，中国控制信贷对小企业的影响最大。尽管中国经常看上去是被大型企业集团和庞大的国有企业主导，但实际上，中国经济在一定程度上比西方经济更依赖小企业。中国央行行长周四在上海的一次讲话中承认，北京最近几个月对限制借贷的处理方式，在无意中伤害了最有创业氛围的经济领域。

Over all, there is growing evidence that a credit crunch is taking a toll on the Chinese economy.

总的来说，越来越多的证据表明，信贷紧缩正在伤害中国经济。

The National Bureau of Statistics released data in Beijing on Thursday showing that investment, retail sales and industrial production all slowed in May. The slowdowns in investment and retail sales were particularly sharp and unexpected.

中国国家统计局周四在北京发布的数据显示，5月投资、零售和工业生产均有所放缓。投资和零售领域的放缓特别剧烈和出人意料。

With that backdrop of eroding economic growth, the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, conspicuously did not match on Thursday the Federal Reserve’s increase to interest rates on Wednesday. It had at least partly matched previous Federal Reserve interest rate rises since the autumn.

周四，在经济增长放缓的背景下，中国央行中国人民银行没有在美联储(Federal Reserve)周三加息后相应加息。此举不同寻常。此前，在美联储自去年秋天以来多次加息时，该行至少在一定程度上采取了相应的加息措施。

An index of 300 large-company stocks traded in Shanghai and Shenzhen dropped 0.4 percent on Thursday, while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong fell 0.9 percent on the poor economic news from the mainland.

周四，沪深300指数下跌0.4%，香港恒生指数也在内地传出经济疲软的消息后应声下跌0.9%。

With the Chinese economy showing signs of slowing and the authorities making it harder to borrow, small businesses are particularly vulnerable. They represent about three-fifths of economic output in China, compared with around half in Germany, Japan and the United States, according to Yi Gang, the governor of the People’s Bank of China.

随着中国经济表现出放缓的迹象，当局提高借贷难度，小型企业尤其脆弱。据中国人民银行行长易纲称，小企业在中国的经济产出中约占五分之三，而在德国、日本和美国，这个比例约为一半。

Now many of those small businesses are struggling for loans because of a wide-ranging government crackdown. Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s both downgraded China’s sovereign debt credit rating last year because of concerns about the country’s debt overhang.

现在，由于政府的大范围打击，很多小企业都难以获得贷款。去年，因为担心中国的债务负担，穆迪(Moody’s)和标准普尔(Standard & Poor’s)下调了中国的主权债务信用评级。

The downgrades were among many reasons the government has tightened some curbs on borrowing since the end of the autumn. Beijing has particularly clamped down on lending by online finance companies and other private sector businesses that bypass the state-controlled banking system.

评级被调低是中国政府从去年秋末开始收紧借贷限制措施的众多原因之一。中国对越过国有银行体系的互联网金融公司和其他私营企业的打击尤其严厉。

While commercial banks have continued to lend the money they hold from deposits, these conventional loans go mainly to state-owned enterprises. Private lenders, meanwhile, charge interest rates that are double or triple the 6 percent charged by banks, but they are often the only source of financing for small businesses.

尽管商业银行继续用吸收到的存款放贷，但这些常规贷款主要流向国有企业。相比之下，民间借贷收取的利率是银行利率6%的两倍或三倍，但它们往往是小企业唯一的资金来源。

Despite the higher interest rates, “we should also fully affirm the significance of private loans, which are an important supplement” to bank lending in the Chinese economy, said Mr. Yi, speaking at the Lujiazui Forum, a gathering in Shanghai of China’s top financial regulators. The forum, held at the start of each summer, is one of the Chinese government’s main channels for signaling the direction of Chinese monetary and financial policy.

易纲在陆家嘴论坛上说，尽管利率上调，但是在中国的经济中，“我们要充分地肯定民间融资的重要性”，对于银行借贷来说，“民间融资也是一个重要的补充”。该论坛是每年夏初在上海举办的中国高级金融监管者聚会，是中国政府发出中国货币和经济政策走向信号的主要渠道之一。

Even before deciding on Thursday morning not to match the Fed’s rate increase, though, the Chinese government had already made a pair of moves that appear to have been elaborately crafted to channel more money to smaller, more entrepreneurial businesses.

尽管周四上午决定不跟进美联储的加息，但中国政府在此前已经做出两项举措，似乎是为了向规模更小、更具创业精神的企业输送更多资金而精心设计的。

At the start of this month, the central bank said that commercial banks could use some of their small-business loans as collateral for borrowing money at low interest rates directly from the central bank. And on April 17, it told commercial banks that they could reduce the amount of money they set aside unprofitably as reserves, provided that they took actions that would leave them with more cash to lend to small and midsize businesses.

央行在本月初表示，商业银行可将对小型企业的贷款作为抵押，直接从央行以低利率借入资金。4月17日，央行告知商业银行，假若它们采取措施获得更多向中小型企业借贷的资金，就可以减少无利的存款准备金。

Gary Liu, the president of the China Financial Reform Institute, a Shanghai-based research group, said on the sidelines of the Lujiazui Forum that China’s private-sector companies of all sizes, even large ones, had long faced challenges in obtaining loans. But the credit squeeze on them this spring has been particularly painful.

上海的研究机构中国金融改革研究院院长刘胜军在参加陆家嘴论坛时表示，中国各种规模的私营企业——甚至是大规模的私营企业，都在获取贷款方面长期面临挑战。但今年年春的信贷紧缩对他们的影响格外严重。

“It’s very bad, and we see not just small and medium-sized enterprises defaulting but even big companies defaulting,” he said.

“这很不好，我们看到的不只是中小型企业违约，就连大公司都在违约，”他说。

Some financial regulators nevertheless appear determined to maintain the crackdown on informal lending.

但一些金融监管者似乎决心继续打击非正规贷款。

Speaking at the forum, Guo Shuqing, the chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, called for further rigor. He warned the audience against putting money into the dwindling number of online finance companies that still offered high returns on investment. While some informal lending operations provide valuable credit to small businesses, others have proved to be fraudulent.

中国银行保险监督管理委员会主席郭树清在论坛上发言时，呼吁进一步严格监管。他提醒听众不要把资金投入数量不断减少、仍在提供高投资回报的网络金融公司。尽管有一些非正式贷款业务为小企业提供了宝贵的信贷，但也有一些被证明是欺诈性的。

“You need to report them so we can find all these Ponzi-type schemes,” Mr. Guo said.

“要积极举报，让庞氏骗局无所遁形。”郭树清说。

China’s financial policymakers have made clear that they do not mind seeing a few defaults and some strains in the system. Retail auto sales slackened last month, and unsold cars have started accumulating at dealerships. A decision by the authorities to allow at least a dozen bond defaults in recent weeks, after years of preventing them, has rattled some investors.

中国的财政政策制定者已明确表示，他们不介意看到系统中有少量违约和一些压力。上个月，汽车零售的销量放缓，未售出的汽车在经销商处堆积。在最近几周，对此防范多年的当局允许了十余起债券违约，这让一些投资者感到不安。

The Chinese economy is not crashing. By international standards, the pace of bond defaults is still negligible. While car sales have leveled off, they have done so at a very high level after two decades of strong growth, causing chronic traffic jams. Real estate demand is still buoyant, and so is the construction industry.

中国的经济并未崩溃。按照国际标准，债券违约的速度仍然微不足道。虽然汽车销量已趋于平稳，但这是在20年的高水平强劲增长造成了长期的交通拥堵之后。房地产需求依然蓬勃，建筑业也是如此。

But faced with a high level of debt across the economy, “what regulators need to be careful is not to respond in such a heavy-handed way that it could essentially compound the risks,” said Fred Hu, an influential Chinese economist who is now a hedge fund chairman in Hong Kong.

但面对整个经济的高负债水平，中国有影响力的经济学家、现任香港某对冲基金主席的胡祖六表示，“监管机构需要注意的是不要以如此强硬的方式作出回应，这实际上可能会加剧风险”。