中国信贷扩张催生投资泡沫 鸡蛋期价飙升

HONG KONG — China is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into its economy in a new effort to support growth. Some of it is going into roads and bridges and other big projects that will keep the economy humming.

香港——中国新采取的保增长举措，是向经济领域注入数以千亿美元计的资金。一些资金正在流向会让经济保持发展势头的路桥建设等大型项目。

And some of it is going into eggs.

还有一些正在流向鸡蛋。

China’s latest lending deluge has sent money sloshing into unexpected parts of the economy. That includes a financial market in Dalian where investors can place bets on the future productivity of the country’s hens.

中国的最新一轮信贷扩张，已经让资金进入某些出人意料的经济领域。其中包括大连的一个金融市场，在那里，投资者可以押注于中国母鸡未来的生产力。

Egg futures have surged by as much as one-third since March, the sort of move that would be justified if investors believed China’s chicken flocks were headed for an unfortunate fate.

自三月以来，鸡蛋期价已经飙升了三分之一。而只有投资者认为中国的鸡群即将遭遇灾难，这种涨幅才称得上合理。

But the market’s usual participants say the flocks are fine. In fact, the actual price of eggs in the country’s markets has fallen from a year ago, according to government statistics.

但该市场的资深参与者表示，鸡群的情况还不错。事实上，中国政府的统计数据显示，与一年前相比，该国鸡蛋的实际市场价已经有所下降。

The reason for the unusual jump in egg futures, they say, is China’s tendency to experience investment bubbles when the government steps up spending and lending. China’s previous efforts to bolster growth unexpectedly sent money into real estate and the stock market — markets that had unexplained rises followed by striking drops.

他们说，鸡蛋期价之所以出现不同寻常的飙升，是因为当中国政府扩大支出、放松信贷时，常常会催生投资泡沫。中国此前的保增长举措曾让资金出人意料地流进房地产和股票市场，致使二者毫无道理地上涨，随后又遭遇大跌。

“Many commodities prices have gone up crazily,” said Du Shaoxing, a futures trader in Guangzhou, in southern China. “We surely hope for a more stabilized trend where futures can reflect economic fundamentals. The way in which recent commodity prices went up is worrisome.”

“很多大宗商品的价格都疯狂上涨，”中国南方城市广州的期货交易员杜绍兴（音）说。“我们肯定希望其走势更加稳定，从而可以反映中国经济的基本面。大宗商品价格最近的这种涨法令人担忧。”

China’s latest bubble illustrates the potential risks of its newest effort to spur growth. The Chinese economy is already burdened with too much debt, economists say. And sometimes, stopgap measures to help the economy create long-term problems.

中国新涌现的投资泡沫，反映出刺激经济增长的最新举措所具有的潜在风险。经济学家称，中国经济已经背负了太多债务负担。有时候，一些权宜之计会导致经济领域产生长期问题。

China is the world’s biggest producer of eggs, but it is not clear whether the investment surge in eggs will have an impact on real-world prices. Jumps in the futures prices on commodities markets can take months to trickle down to the real world, and if the commodities surge subsides, then the price of eggs in local markets may not budge.

中国是世界上最大的鸡蛋生产国，但目前尚不清楚鸡蛋期价飙升是否会对实际市场价产生影响。在大宗商品市场上，期价可能要经过好几个月时间才会传导到现实世界，而且如果大宗商品价格飙升热潮消退，当地市场的鸡蛋价格也许不会出现变化。

Eggs are not the only commodity suddenly out of kilter. Domestic prices and trading volumes on steel, garlic, cotton, iron ore and other items have all soared. This despite the fact that China’s economic slowdown has hurt demand for many items. Officials at Chinese commodities markets are now taking steps to cool speculative fervor to avoid crashes, and prices have begun to ease.

鸡蛋并非唯一一种突然进入非常态的大宗商品。钢材、大蒜、棉花、铁矿石等交易品种的国内价格和交易量都大幅飙升。这种局面是在中国经济增长放缓导致多种商品的需求有所下降的情况下出现的。为避免崩盘，中国主管大宗商品市场的官员正想方设法给投机狂潮降温，目前价格已经趋于稳定。

By mid-April, the frenzy made Shanghai futures contracts in steel rebar, the rods used in construction to reinforce concrete, the most actively traded in the world — overtaking trading volumes of two major oil futures contracts, West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude, that have helped set oil prices for decades, analysts at Citigroup said in a report last week.

花旗集团(Citigroup)分析师在上周的一份报告中称，截至4月中旬，这种狂潮让上海期货交易所的螺纹钢期货合约交易量超过了美国西德克萨斯中质原油（West Texas Intermediate，简称WTI）和布兰特原油(Brent)期货合约交易量，使其成为了全球最活跃的期货交易品种。螺纹钢是建筑业中用于加固混凝土的钢筋条，而西德克萨斯中质原油和布兰特原油这两大原油期货合约，数十年来一直在影响原油的定价。

“There is very little rational or fundamental basis for why prices have gotten as out of hand as they have, or why volumes are so high, other than just irrational exuberance,” said Alex Wolf, an emerging markets economist at Standard Life Investments in Edinburgh, who previously worked as an American diplomat based in Beijing and Taipei.

“价格如此失控，交易量如此之大，却没有什么合理的依据或基本面支撑，只能说这是非理性繁荣的结果，”爱丁堡标准人寿投资公司(Standard Life Investments)致力于新兴市场研究的经济学家亚历克斯·沃尔夫(Alex Wolf)说。沃尔夫曾任美国驻北京和台北的外交官。

Economists blame Beijing’s new efforts to shore up its economy. Government officials increased lending by state-controlled banks and offered other support measures in the first few months of the year as economic growth slowed and longtime drivers like manufacturing and exports showed continued weakness.

经济学家对中国振兴经济的新举措提出了批评。今年前几个月，在经济增长有所放缓，制造业、出口等长期以来的经济驱动器持续呈现疲软态势之际，政府官员通过国有银行扩大了信贷规模，并采取了其他一些支持性措施。

Saad Rahim, the chief economist at Trafigura, one of the world’s biggest traders of metals and oil, calculates that China added about $1 trillion in new liquidity in the first quarter of the year — an amount that would be roughly equal to the entire quarterly economic output of Germany during the same period.

据全球最大的石油和金属贸易商之一托克集团(Trafigura)的首席经济学家萨阿德·拉希姆(Saad Rahim)估计，中国在今年第一季度新增了大约1万亿美元的流动性——该数额基本相当于德国当季的经济总产出。

“This kind of scale is unprecedented and some of it will leak into speculative investments,” Mr. Rahim said.

“这种规模是史无前例的，其中一部分会进入投机性投资领域，”拉希姆说。

In the short term, the new lending may be good news for global growth, if it works. China’s first-quarter growth came in at 6.7 percent, about where economists had expected, despite some indications that growth had weakened further.

从短期来看，这部分新增贷款如果能发挥作用，对全球经济增长而言或许是好消息。中国第一季度的经济增长率是6.7%，基本符合经济学家此前的预期，尽管有迹象显示，经济增速已经进一步放缓。

But in turning to its old playbook, China risks adding to its already fast-growing pile of debt, which by some estimates is nearly 300 percent of gross domestic product.

中国在重演故伎之时，冒着让快速增长的债务负担变得更加沉重的风险。据估计，该国总债务占GDP的比重已经接近300%。

The problems are most acute when it comes to China’s corporate borrowers, which have gorged on cheap credit in the years since the global financial crisis. In a report released in April, the International Monetary Fund found that nearly 600 companies had almost $400 billion of debt that was considered at risk, accounting for 14 percent of total corporate borrowing in China.

问题最严重的是中国的企业借款人，在全球金融危机爆发以来的许多年里，它们获得了大量廉价信贷资金。国际货币基金组织(International Monetary Fund)今年4月发布的一份报告显示，发放给近600家企业的大约4000亿美元信贷资金被认为存在风险，占中国企业借款总额的14%。

But the renewed push for credit-fueled growth shows that policy makers’ concerns about China’s debt burden appear to have been set aside for now. By delaying efforts to wean itself off cheap credit, China may be setting itself up for some problems related to debt and industrial overcapacity.

但重新推出的以信贷推动经济增长的举措表明，中国的政策制定者目前似乎已经把对债务负担的担忧放在了一边。通过缓行旨在减少对廉价信贷资金的依赖的一些措施，中国或许正在为自己制造某些与债务和工业产能过剩有关的问题。

There are few places for China’s money to go. The country has tightened already stringent limits on how much money its people can send or invest abroad. Its stock market is still recovering from a crash last year. And its property market remains saddled with a glut of apartments in many cities.

中国的资金没有太多去处。当局已经近一步收紧了对中国人向海外汇款或进行海外投资的限制。去年崩盘的中国股票市场目前还在恢复当中。此外，很多城市里过剩的公寓楼仍旧仍旧在拖累中国房地产市场。

A property market bubble arose from the huge stimulus that Beijing deployed after the 2008 financial crisis, which set off a building boom.

在2008年的金融危机爆发后，北京推行的大规模经济刺激措施掀起了一轮建设热潮，催生出了房地产泡沫。

Stocks overtook property in investor interest last year. A raging bull market that was cheered on by official news outlets like People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s newspaper, skidded to a halt in June.

去年，股票接替房地产成为投资者的新宠。一波凶猛的大牛市在共产党喉舌《人民日报》等官方媒体加油打气之下应运而生，但却在去年6月戛然而止。

As for eggs, Chen Jie, who works in the futures department at Hubei Shendan Healthy Food, the biggest egg company in China, said in a phone interview that “there is definitely speculative capital in the market.”

至于鸡蛋，中国最大蛋产品企业湖北神丹健康食品有限公司期货部门的陈杰（音）接受电话采访时说，“这一市场上肯定存在投机性资本。”

Her company supplies eggs to KFC and McDonald’s restaurants, and sells them at more than 10,000 supermarkets across China, including those of chains like Walmart, Carrefour and Metro.

她所在的公司是肯德基(KFC)和麦当劳(McDonald)餐厅的鸡蛋供应商，还把鸡蛋销往中国各地超过1万家超市，其中包括沃尔玛(Walmart)、家乐福(Carrefour)、麦德龙(Metro)等连锁超市。

Hubei Shendan uses the futures market to hedge its bets against swings in actual egg prices. An abnormally volatile futures market makes that job more difficult.

湖北神丹利用期货市场来对冲鸡蛋现货价格波动带来的风险。期货市场出现异常波动，让他们的工作变得更困难了。

“The reason we are in the egg futures market is because the big swings in egg prices will affect our profitability, and a good futures market will help us in that regard,” Ms. Chen said.

“我们之所以进入鸡蛋期货市场，是因为波幅巨大的鸡蛋现货价格会影响我们的盈利能力，一个好的期货市场在这方面会对我们有所帮助，”陈杰说。