保险公司成为中国新影子银行

The ever ingenious Chinese financial system has developed a new kind of Shadow Bank – insurance companies.

一向富有创造性的中国金融体系已发展出一种新型的影子银行——保险公司。

China’s $586bn stimulus package in 2009 caused a flurry of lending through the country’s financial arteries. Some of this money ended up leaking out of the banks into unofficial channels, including the country’s state banks and the giant provincially-owned pseudo banks called Trust Companies. By the end of 2014, these off-balance sheet loans accounted for 18 per cent of all financing, up from less than 2 per cent a decade earlier.

中国2008年推出的5860亿美元的一揽子经济刺激计划，在中国的整个金融动脉中引发了一阵信贷风潮。其中一部分资金最终从银行流入非正式渠道，包括庞大的省属伪银行——信托公司。到2014年年底，这些表外贷款占融资总额的比例达到了18%，而10年前该比例还不到2%。

However, as this flood of cash poured into the economy, mainly into the property industry, it caused a tremendous asset bubble, and Beijing became nervous about the potential for the a collapse if all the air burst out of the market at the same time.

然而，涌入经济、尤其是房地产行业的大量资金，造成了巨大的资产泡沫。北京方面也开始担心如果市场中的所有泡沫同时破裂会引发崩盘。

So, in 2014 the regulators including the China Banking Regulatory Commission and the People’s Bank of China put in place stricter rules about shadow loans. As a result, in the first two months of this year, bank loans rose to 77 per cent of total financing, up from 64 per cent a year earlier. It looked like shadow finance was on the wane.

因此，中国银监会(CBRC)和中国央行等监管机构在2014年出台了更严格的影子贷款相关规则。这使今年头两个月银行贷款在融资总额中的比例从去年同期的64%升至77%。影子金融看上去正在走下坡路。

Ah, but not so fast. China’s slippery financial system is not so easily tied down. Egged on by provincial leaders desperate to keep the wheels of GDP growth rolling forward and cash-strapped property developers, other institutions have jumped into the fray. And one of the biggest are Chinese insurance companies.

但事情的发展不会这么快。想要约束中国棘手的金融体系并非易事。在极力保持国内生产总值(GDP)增长滚滚向前的省级领导，和资金短缺的房地产开发商的双重推动下，其他的机构也纷纷加入这场乱局。其中最大的参与者之一就是中国的保险公司。

By the end of January 2015, alternative investments surged 66.4 per cent year-over-year to Rmb2.3tn, accounting for a whopping 24 per cent of total insurance investments. In contrast, investments in bank deposits and bonds grew no more than 9 per cent, and even money socked away in China’s booming stock market rose only 17 per cent – one-quarter as fast as in alternative investments.

到2015年1月末，保险公司的另类投资同比飙涨66.4%，至2.3万亿元人民币，占保险公司投资总额的比例达到了24%。相较之下，保险公司对银行存款和债券的投资涨幅不超过9%，甚至投向中国暴涨的股市的资金也只增长了17%，仅为另类投资增速的四分之一。

What are these alternative investments? The insurance industry guards this information carefully. However, at the insurance industry’s annual meeting earlier this year, participants let slip that insurance is the biggest source of capital for China’s infrastructure construction.

这些另类投资是什么？保险公司对这些信息守口如瓶。然而，在今年早些时候的保险业年会上，与会者无意中透露，保险业是中国基础设施建设的最大资金来源。

According to the data presented, in 2014 the insurance industry’s infrastructure investment rose 57 per cent to Rmb1.1tn. This includes everything from bridges and local property developments to more than Rmb100m in affordable housing.

根据年会披露的数据，2014年保险业对基础设施的投资增长了57%，至1.1万亿元人民币。这包括对桥梁、地方房地产开发的投资，以及超过1000亿元人民币的棚户区改造和保障房建设投资。

But the story becomes much more interesting when we look at the main conduits for these investments. Much of this was invested in debt issued by local governments through Local Government Financing Platforms (LGFV). LGFVs are off-balance sheet companies that were established in local towns across China as a way to avoid lending caps to governments for infrastructure investment.

但如果我们看一看这些投资的主要渠道，会发现事情变得有趣得多。这些资金大部分投向地方政府通过“地方政府融资平台”举借的债务。地方政府融资平台是由中国各地地方政府设立的一些表外公司，目的是规避政府的举债上限，以进行基础设施投资。

One of our interviewees, who works for the business promotion office at a Jiangsu province LGFV, said insurance investments have been promoted by provincial officials to meet the financial needs of their infrastructure projects because:

在江苏省的一个地方政府融资平台的业务拓展办公室工作的一名受访者说，省级官员为了满足基建项目的融资需求助推保险公司投资，原因是：

1) Insurance companies have stable long-term sources of funds, which match the five-to-ten year construction period of infrastructure projects.

1)保险公司有稳定的长期资金来源，这符合基建项目5到10年的建设期。

2) Insurance companies are willing to lend capital at lower interest rates than another large source of shadow capital, trust funds, namely, 7.5 per cent. “Most importantly, unlike trust companies, we don’t have any other implicit costs,” the official noted. Trusts often have to pay additional fees to banks and other third parties.

2)相比另一大影子融资来源——信托基金，保险公司愿意以更低的利率出借资金，也就是7.5%。“最重要的是，与信托公司不同，我们没有任何其他隐性成本，”这名官员表示。信托公司往往必须向银行和其他第三方机构支付额外费用。

Take Taikang Life Insurance Company. It bought debt issued Wenzhou Shoal, managed by the Wenzhou Port City Development Co., in Zhejiang Province. According to our research, Wenzhou Port City Development Co., Ltd is an independent company, controlled by Oujiang Construction, Investment & Development Co., which is an LGFV. Oujiang is assumed to have an “implicit” government guarantee – although local governments have no legal basis for providing this.

以泰康人寿(Taikang Life Insurance)为例。该公司认购了浙江省温州港城发展有限公司温州浅滩工程的债权投资计划。根据我们的研究，温州港城是一家独立公司，由温州市瓯江口开发建设投资集团(Wenzhou Oujiangkou Development and Construction Investment Group)控股，该集团是一个地方政府融资平台。该集团被认为拥有“隐性”的政府担保，尽管地方政府没有提供这种担保的法律依据。

Another firm, Changjiang Pension Insurance bought a seven-year debt investment plan worth Rmb2bn invested in several municipal construction projects managed by Shanghai Shenjiang Group – an LGFV. This was the first pension insurance fund investment in Shanghai urban construction. The capital will be used to pay the debts of seven completed public welfare projects.

另一家公司长江养老保险股份有限公司(Changjiang Pension Insurance)发起了20亿元人民币、期限为7年的债权投资计划，向由地方政府融资平台——上海市申江两岸开发建设投资集团管理的几个市政建设工程投资。这是上海市政建设中首次运用养老保险基金投资。这些资金的用途包括偿还7个已建成公益性项目的债务。

What is the problem with the insurance companies investing in China’s booming construction industry?

保险公司投资中国蓬勃发展的建筑业有什么不妥之处？

- First, the insurance firms are not transparent to shareholders or investors about where their money is going.

首先，保险公司不向股东和投资者公开资金的流向。

- Second, there is an implicit assumption of government backing for these projects, an assumption which has no legal basis and will be sorely tested as China’s economy slows.

其次，这其中的隐含假设是政府会支持这些项目，这一假设没有法律依据，在中国经济放缓之际会受到严峻的考验。

- Third, these are highly risky investments. Local governments are seeing dwindling revenue from land sales and are increasingly desperate to generate new sources of cash, and are thus probably not the safest place to invest insurance premiums.

第三，这些都是高风险投资。看到卖地收入逐渐萎缩的地方政府日益迫切地寻求新的资金来源，因此它们很可能并非保险费投资的最安全之所。

But there is a bigger, more worrisome issue that speaks to the nature of China’s opaque and distributed political and economic system. With a slowing economy, Beijing is searching for mechanisms to simultaneously generate growth and cope with the country’s total debt, now approaching 200 per cent of GDP.

但论及中国不透明和分散式的政治和经济体系，还有一个更大也更令人忧虑的问题。随着中国经济放缓，北京方面正在寻求一个能同时提振增长并应对高额债务的机制，目前中国的总债务已经接近GDP的200%。

Understandably, Beijing’s leaders in the State Council and the central bank are reluctant to lean too much on the country’s banks, which are considered the trigger of last resort. So they are tapping whatever cash pools they can – and insurance companies currently are in Beijing’s sites. In essence, the insurance companies are functioning asproxy Keynesian stimulus levers.

可以理解，国务院和央行的领导们并不情愿太过依靠被视为最后手段的银行。因此他们尽可能地利用可供利用的资金池，保险公司目前就处在北京的利用范围内。本质上，保险公司的作用就是代理充当凯恩斯主义的刺激杠杆。

As one insurance executive noted; “To my knowledge, many LFGVs now consider the insurance funds as their life-saving straw to improve the debt structure as the whole country keeps a watchful eye on the risks related to local government debts.”

正如一名保险公司高管提出的：“据我所知，由于全国都对地方政府债务的相关风险十分关注，许多地方政府融资平台现在把保险公司当作改善债务结构的救命稻草。”

By involving almost every area of the economy in a quasi government stimulus, often through the lightly regulated Shadow Banking system, China risks a fiscal crisis much larger than the current data would suggest. That’s a potential financial time bomb both for China and the rest of the world.

中国把几乎所有经济领域都卷入这种准政府刺激之中（往往是通过监管宽松的影子银行系统），会面临比当前数据显示出的大得多的财政危机风险。对中国和世界来说，这都是一个潜在的金融定时炸弹。