IMF就中国企业债务问题发出警告

China’s corporate debt risks sparking a bigger crisis if the authorities fail to tackle it, the International Monetary Fund has warned.

国际货币基金组织(IMF)警告称，如果中国当局应对不力，中国的企业债务可能会引发一场更大的危机。

It is the latest red flag over China’s ballooning debt, which rose to a record 237 per cent of gross domestic product in the first quarter on the back of massive lending designed to boost economic growth.

这是各方针对中国不断膨胀的债务发出的最新警示信号。在旨在提振经济增长的大规模放贷的推动下，今年第一季度，中国债务相对国内生产总值(GDP)的比例已升至创纪录的237%。

That has put the subject to the fore of this year’s annual IMF review of the Chinese economy with a team from the Fund set to conclude its latest monitoring mission on Tuesday.

这使得IMF在其今年对中国经济的年度评估工作中将该问题放在了首要位置，该机构的一个团队将在周二完成最新的评估工作。

“Corporate debt remains a serious — and growing — problem [in China] that must be addressed immediately and with a commitment to serious reforms,” said David Lipton, the IMF’s number 2 and the leader of its latest mission, which ends on Tuesday.

IMF的二号人物、此项最新评估的负责人戴维•利普顿（David Lipton，上图）表示：“（在中国）企业债务仍然是一个严重且不断恶化的问题，必须立即加以解决，并承诺实施重大的改革。”

Speaking in Shenzhen, where then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping kicked off China’s experiments with capitalism more than three decades ago, Mr Lipton pointed to the potential risk to the global economy.

在深圳发表演讲时，利普顿指出了中国债务问题给全球经济带来的潜在风险。30多年前，中国当时的最高领导人邓小平在深圳开启了资本主义试验。

“We have learned over and over in the past 20 years how disruptions in one country’s economy and markets can reverberate worldwide,” he said, citing the global “spillovers” from last year’s turmoil in Chinese markets.

“过去20年，我们已经反复领教了一国经济和市场的动荡可以在世界范围内造成多大的影响，”利普顿说。他提到了去年中国市场动荡带来的全球“溢出效应”。

He warned that efforts to address China’s corporate debt load — which at 145 per cent of GDP was “very high by any measure” — had seen only “limited progress”.

他警告，解决中国企业债务负担的努力只取得了“有限进展”，中国相当于GDP的145%的企业债务“按任何标准衡量都属非常高的水平”。

“With the rapid increase in credit growth in 2015 and early 2016, and the continued high rates of investment, the problem is growing. This is a key fault line in the Chinese economy . . . And it is important that China tackles it soon,” he said.

他说：“随着2015年和2016年初信贷增长的迅速提速、以及投资率的居高不下，这个问题正变得日益严重。这是中国经济的一个主要薄弱环节……重要的是中国要快速解决它。”

Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, has long warned of the dangers of the corporate debt build-up, according to people familiar with the central bank’s deliberations.

熟悉中国央行内部讨论的人士透露，行长周小川长期以来一直在警告企业债务累积之危险。

In May the official People’s Daily newspaper picked up the theme, running a front-page interview with an unidentified “authoritative figure” who warned that soaring debt levels could trigger a “systemic” financial crisis.

今年5月，官方的《人民日报》(People’s Daily)选中了这一话题，在头版刊发了一篇对身份不明的“权威人士”的访谈，这名人士警告称，不断飙升的债务水平可能引发“系统性”金融危机。

China has since launched a series of initiatives to whittle back the bad debt sitting on banks’ balance sheets, including securitisation and debt-for-equity swaps — although Mr Lipton echoed analysts who see these as having limited resuts and doing little to eliminate bad debt from the overall financial system.

中国已推出了一系列举措，以降低银行资产负债表上的坏账，其中包括证券化和债转股——尽管利普顿和一些分析人士都认为，这些举措成效有限，并未起到将坏账从整个金融系统中消除的作用。

Zhang Tao, deputy governor of People’s Bank of China, speaking at a financial forum in Shanghai on Sunday, signaled a willingness to let zombie companies die. “Any industry that lacks the mechanism to elevate winners and eliminate losers can’t develop in a healthy and sustainable way,” he said.

6月12日，中国央行副行长张涛在上海出席一个金融论坛时表达了想要淘汰僵尸企业的意愿：“一个没有优胜劣汰机制的行业是不可能健康持续发展的。”

He said an orderly system would be put in place for failed financial institutions: “We will permit financial institutions to go bankrupt in an orderly way, restructure those that need restructuring, shut those that need to be shut, and strengthen market discipline.”

张涛表示对于经营失败的金融机构要建立有序的处置和退出框架：“……允许金融机构有序破产。该重组的重组，该倒闭的倒闭，增强市场的约束。”

Mr Lipton highlighted the state-owned enterprises, which he said were responsible for 55 per cent of the corporate debt pile despite representing 22 per cent of economic output and which “are essentially on life support”.

利普顿特别指出了国企问题。他表示国企在中国经济产出中仅占22%，而且“基本靠救助维持”，但其债务规模却占企业债务总额的55%。

“In a setting of slower economic growth, the combination of declining earnings and rising indebtedness is undermining the ability of companies to pay suppliers or service their debts,” Mr Lipton warned. “Banks are holding more and more non-performing loans [and] the past year’s credit boom is just extending the problem.”

利普顿警告称：“在经济增长放缓的背景下，盈利下降加上债务上升，削弱了企业支付供应商款项或偿还债务的能力。银行持有的不良贷款越来越多，而过去一年的信贷热只会放大这一问题。”

While concluding the issue is “manageable”, he warned that a recent IMF estimate that put the potential losses for China’s banks from bad corporate loans at 7 per cent of GDP was a conservative estimate that excluded exposures in the “shadow banking” sector.

利普顿虽然总结说这一问题是“可控的”，但他警告称，IMF近期所估计的、中国银行业在不良企业贷款上的潜在损失达到GDP的7%是个保守估计，未将“影子银行业”的敞口考虑在内。

The risk was also that if the problem wasn’t dealt with speedily it could grow into a large crisis. “Company debt problems today can become systemic debt problems tomorrow,” Mr Lipton said. And “systemic debt problems can lead to much lower economic growth, or a banking crisis. Or both.”

风险还在于，如果企业债务问题得不到迅速解决，可能会演变成一场大危机。利普顿说：“今天是企业债务问题，明天可能就成了系统性债务问题。系统性债务问题可能会导致经济增长速度大幅下降，或者引起银行业危机，或者二者同时发生。”