中国买家进军纽约布鲁克林

Back in 2007, when I was relocating from London to New York, I bid against a Brazilian and a German for my Brooklyn brownstone. I thought that would be the high-water mark for international buyers interested in fixer-up properties a good 45 minutes from midtown Manhattan, but I was wrong.

2007年，我从伦敦搬到纽约的时候，曾与一个巴西人和一个德国人竞价购买我在布鲁克林的这套赤褐色砂石住宅。我当时以为，国际买家对距离曼哈顿市中心45分钟路程的陈旧住宅感兴趣的高点也不过如此了，然而我错了。

These days, I regularly wake to leaflets from Chinese property developers dumped on my front stoop, offering to buy homes for cash. And this even after Beijing has put various restrictions on the outflow of capital, in an attempt to prop up its currency.

最近，早上起来后，我经常发现门廊上有中国房地产开发商丢下的传单，表示愿以现金购房。这还是在北京方面为支撑本币，对资本外流施加了各种限制的情况下。

Foreign money has always played a huge role in luxury property markets like Manhattan and London. While international buyers in New York tend to come and go depending on the strength of the dollar relative to their local currency, veteran appraiser Jonathan Miller, the president and chief executive of Miller Samuel, tells me that foreign buyers over the past few years have come to represent a baseline 15 per cent of the Manhattan luxury market.

外国资金在曼哈顿和伦敦等豪宅市场一直扮演着重要角色。在纽约，虽然国际买家往往随着美元兑他们本国货币汇率的相对强弱而时来时走，但Miller Samuel的总裁兼首席执行官、资深估价师乔纳森?米勒(Jonathan Miller)告诉我，过去几年外国买家占了曼哈顿豪宅市场的15%（基线值）。

What is new is that they are expanding into border neighbourhoods such as Brooklyn, where town houses typically sell for about a third of what they might in prime NYC, and the foreign money — particularly the Chinese money — is staying, regardless of how strong or weak the dollar is. “Even when the dollar began to rise in 2015, the Chinese didn’t leave — they are just moving to Brooklyn, or Houston, or other second cities, and they are buying cheaper properties with more potential upside,” says Mr Miller.

一个新趋势是，他们正向布鲁克林这样的边缘社区扩展，布鲁克林的联体别墅(town house)售价通常相当于纽约中心地段的约三分之一，而无论美元如何走强或疲软，外国资金——尤其是中国资金——都不挪地。米勒说：“即使在2015年美元开始上涨时，中国人也没有离开，他们只是搬到了布鲁克林，或休斯顿，或其他二线城市，而且他们还在购买更便宜的、有更大升值潜力的房产。”

Part of that shift may be related to the fact that early last year the US Treasury began investigating limited liability companies from abroad that were buying properties worth $3m or more in Manhattan and $1m or more in Miami, in an effort to stem money laundering by dicey billionaires.

这一转变部分可能关系到去年年初的一件事，当时美国财政部开始调查在曼哈顿购买总价达到或超过300万美元的房地产，在迈阿密购买总价达到或超过100万美元的房地产的外国有限责任公司，以阻止可疑的亿万富翁进行洗钱行为。

Yet the money keeps flowing in, and 2016 was a record year for Chinese foreign direct investment into the US — the two most popular sectors being technology (witness Baidu’s latest Silicon Valley expansion plans) and property.

然而资金仍不断流入，2016年中国对美国直接投资更是创下纪录，最受欢迎的两大领域分别是科技——看看百度(Baidu)在硅谷的最新扩张计划——和房地产。

Like the Japanese purchase of Rockefeller Center in the late 1980s, the Chinese purchase of the Waldorf Astoria in 2014 has become a cultural marker for the trend. It is worth noting that technology and commercial real estate (which has also seen big inflows of Chinese money) are two of the frothiest sectors in the US at the moment.

就像日本人在上世纪80年代末买下洛克菲勒中心(Rockefeller Center)一样，中国人在2014年买下华尔道夫酒店(Waldorf Astoria)已成为这一趋势的文化标志。值得注意的是，科技和商业房地产——也有中国资金大量流入——也是目前美国泡沫化最严重的两个行业。

All this tells us several important things about the global economy. First, the extent to which world property markets have become totally disconnected from national economies. There has been a massive housing recovery in the US since 2008, but over half of all the gains have accrued to a handful of coastal and wealthy inland markets. Most middle-class Americans keep the majority of their wealth in housing, yet few have seen the kinds of appreciation enjoyed by wealthy homeowners in New York or San Francisco. Just as multinational companies fly 35,000ft over the concerns of national populations, so do coastal elites — and both trends are fuelling political discontent.

上述一切告诉了我们关于全球经济的几件重要事情。首先，这一切反映了全球各房地产市场已与各自所属国家经济完全脱节。自2008年以来，美国房地产市场大规模复苏，但其中一半以上增长归于少数几个沿海市场及富有的内陆市场。大多数美国中产阶层将他们的绝大部分财富投入到房地产，但很少有人见过纽约或旧金山富裕房主所享有的升值。正如跨国公司飘在在3.5万英尺的高空上，远离全美民众的担忧，沿海地区精英也是如此，而这两大趋势都激化了政治上的不满。

Second, it reflects the extent to which China’s wealthy are worried about the economic trajectory of their own country. Whether the renminbi is strong or weak, Chinese money keeps pouring into New York or Miami (or London, or Vancouver). This hints at two things — first, there is still a tremendous amount of worry among rich Chinese about the political and economic future of the Middle Kingdom. Second, like everything in China, the amount of capital that might yet flow out of the country is massive. “We’re not seeing just oligarchs and billionaires buying these days,” says Mr Miller, “but your garden-variety millionaires who want a house in Brooklyn rather than a luxury condo in Manhattan.”

第二，它反映了中国富豪对本国经济运行轨迹的担心程度。不管人民币是强是弱，中国的资本都在不断涌入纽约或迈阿密（或伦敦、或温哥华）。这暗示了两点：首先，中国富豪对这个中央王国(Middle Kingdom)的政治和经济未来仍存在巨大担忧。第二，就像中国的所有事一样，想要流向国外但还未流出的资本量是庞大的。米勒说：“这些天我们不止看到寡头和亿万富豪在买房，我们还看到大量普通百万富翁想在布鲁克林买套独栋别墅，而不是在曼哈顿买套豪华共管公寓(condo)。”

As economists such as Joseph Stiglitz have been saying for years, and as the International Monetary Fund has recently begun to admit, a globalised financial system presents major risk for national economies, which have more and more trouble controlling conditions in their local markets.

正如约瑟夫?斯蒂格利茨(Joseph Stiglitz)等经济学家多年来所说，国际货币基金组织(IMF)最近也开始承认的，全球化金融体系给各国经济带来了重大风险，各国在控制自己的本土市场方面遇到越来越多的麻烦。

Normal people (even professionals) in London, Vancouver — and increasingly Brooklyn — cannot afford to get on to the property ladder. The lights are out in Mayfair and areas of Manhattan at night, as apartments purchased as part of an asset portfolio by global elites stand empty. This, of course, adds fuel to the fire of nationalism and populism, the results of which can be seen in Brexit and the rise of polarised politics in the US and Europe.

在伦敦、温哥华，普通百姓（甚至是专业人士）买不起房，在布鲁克林也日益是这种情况。在伦敦的梅费尔和纽约曼哈顿部分区域，入夜后没有亮起灯光，因为全球精英当作资产配置一部分所购买的公寓无人居住。这当然也拨旺了民族主义和民粹主义的火焰，其结果已体现为英国脱欧，以及政治分化在美国和欧洲抬头。

It also underscores the bizarre nature of the backlash against globalisation. If you consider all the pillars of neoliberalism (including the free flow of goods, people and capital) currently under scrutiny, it’s the movement of money globally that has taken the least heat. Yet its effects are powerful. My Brooklyn neighbourhood, which 15 years ago was still populated by cops and firefighters, is now home to McKinsey consultants and famous English actors (and perhaps, soon, a millionaire or two from Wuhan or Chongqing).

这也凸显出反全球化浪潮的古怪性。如果你看一看目前遭受拷问的的新自由主义的所有支柱——包括商品、人力和资本的自由流动，对全球资本流动的拷问最轻，但全球资本流动的作用力是强大的。15年前，我在布鲁克林住的那个社区里大多还是警察和消防队员，现在那里住着麦肯锡(McKinsey)顾问和著名英国演员，或许很快还会有一两位来自武汉或重庆的百万富翁。

You can see the wealth effect, as boutiques selling $500 pairs of shoes and $30 slices of cheese open up. But I wonder if the lights will stay on — and what it will mean for our politics if they do not.

随着一双鞋子500美元、一片奶酪30美元的高档店铺相继开业，你可以看到财富的作用。但我好奇的是，入夜后灯光是否还会亮起？如果不会，这对我们的政治将意味着什么？