企业以股抵债能否挽救中国经济
HONG KONG — A new approach to managing China’s corporate debt burden may offer temporary relief for banks but spell further difficulties for the country’s economy: having deeply troubled companies use stock to pay overdue loans.
香港——用一种新的方式来处理中国企业的债务负担，可能会暂时缓解银行的压力，但却可能给中国经济带来更多问题：让深陷困境的公司用股票来支付逾期贷款。
Early evidence of the strategy emerged late Thursday, when a heavily indebted Chinese shipbuilder disclosed that it would issue equity to its creditors, instead of repaying $2.17 billion in bank loans.
这种策略的早期迹象在本周四晚出现：一家负债累累的中国造船企业表示将向债权人发行股票，而不是偿还21.7亿美元的银行贷款。
If Chinese companies were to broadly adopt the approach for their debt issues, banks could temporarily shore up their balance sheets by replacing troubled loans with shares that have at least some value. But accepting stakes in highly indebted companies is likely to make banks even more reluctant to shut them down.
如果中国企业广泛采取这样的做法来处理债务问题，银行可以暂时使用至少具有一定的价值的股票来替换不良贷款，让其资产负债表有些起色。不过，接受了高负债企业的股份之后，银行可能就更加不愿意关闭它们了。
And that could mean China will be stuck with enormous overcapacity in industrial sectors including shipbuilding, steel and cement, hampering economic growth for years to come.
这可能意味着，中国的造船、钢铁、水泥等工业领域将陷入巨大的产能过剩中，在未来几年里拖累中国的经济增长。
This latest strategy has some advantages. It would allow companies to cut their debt loads. In doing so, they could potentially improve their credit profiles, borrow more from banks, and keep their businesses running.
这个最新策略有一定的好处。公司可以利用它来减轻债务负担。采用这种做法，公司可能会提高自己的信用状况，从银行借到更多资金，继续经营业务。
It also makes banks’ loan books appear healthier, since they can reduce the amount of past-due loans. Financial markets have been fixated on Chinese banks’ portfolios of so-called nonperforming loans. And halting the recent expansion of these loans has become a high priority for Chinese bank executives.
这也会让银行的贷款业务显得更加健康，因为逾期贷款金额将会减少。金融市场一直紧盯着中国银行业的不良贷款状况。抑制这些贷款近期出现的扩大，已成为中国银行高管的当务之急。
While repaying loans with shares might seem a quick solution to China’s enormous debt overhang, it could make the problems more pernicious.
虽然对于中国巨大的债务负担问题，用股份偿还贷款似乎是一个立竿见影的解决方案，但它可能会带来更大的危害。
In effect, it is just another way for troubled Chinese companies to put off making hard choices, like laying off employees and closing operations. Rather, businesses can continue to limp along, even when their underlying operations are not making money and customer demand has evaporated.
实际上，这仍然只会让陷入困境的中国企业推迟作出裁员、停产等艰难的选择，让它们在基本业务已经不能赚钱，客户需求已经消失的情况下继续蹒跚而行。
Such problems have been at the root of China’s economic issues, as many state-owned enterprises, or S.O.E.s, and private companies have continued to roll over the debt and keep their operations going. The government has supported the tactic, in an effort to avert mass layoffs and maintain social stability.
这些问题一直是中国经济的症结所在，因为有很多国有企业和私人公司仍在为了维持运转而进行债务展期。政府支持它们采用这种策略，以免出现大规模裁员，从而维护社会的稳定。
The new approach is “in a nutshell, very bad news for S.O.E. reform and, more specifically, for the solvency of Chinese banks,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, the chief economist for Asia at Natixis, a French investment bank.
这种新方法，“简单地说，对于国企改革是个非常坏的消息，更具体地说，对于该国银行的偿付能力也是如此，”法国投行Natixis亚洲区首席经济学家艾丽西亚·加西亚·耶赫雷罗(Alicia Garcia Herrero)说。
At this point, it is unclear how widespread this strategy has become among Chinese companies. The shipbuilder, China Huarong Energy Company Limited, had to disclose the move only because the company is listed on the Hong Kong stock market. Mainland companies not listed overseas don’t face the same stringent rules.
目前还不清楚这一策略在中国公司中有多普遍。经营造船业的中国华荣能源股份有限公司因为是在香港上市，所以才不得不透露了这种举措。没有在境外上市的内地企业不会面临这种严格的规则。
Two finance specialists with ties to mainland China regulators say the government is working on a broader plan to allow troubled companies to repay loans with shares instead of cash. They declined to speak on the record, citing the sensitivity of the issue within China. Reuters on Thursday reported on regulators’ efforts to help ease banks’ bad debt.
和中国大陆监管部门有联系的两名金融专家说，政府正在制定一项更广泛的计划，让陷入困境的企业可以用股份而非现金的方式偿还贷款。他们拒绝对此事发表正式意见，称这个问题在中国很敏感。本周四，路透社报道了监管部门帮助缓解银行坏账的努力。
Officials at the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, and the China Banking Regulatory Commission could not be reached for comment late Thursday night. Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank’s governor, and three of his deputies are scheduled to hold a news conference on Saturday morning in Beijing, near the session of the National People’s Congress.
周四晚间，记者无法联系到中国的央行——中国人民银行——及中国银行业监督管理委员会的官员置评。央行行长周小川及其三名副手将于周六上午全国人大召开前在北京举行新闻发布会。
The debt issue is core to the debate over where China’s economy is headed.
在有关中国经济前景的争论中，债务是一个核心问题。
China avoided most of the ill effects of the global financial crisis by ordering the state-controlled banking system to engineer a major increase in the money supply. Those banks channeled huge loans to companies and to government construction projects.
中国曾通过要求国家控制的银行系统大幅增加货币供应，避免了全球金融危机的大部分不利影响。这些银行向公司及政府建设项目提供了大量贷款。
While the stimulus helped stoke growth, the country’s debt burden ballooned.
虽然这种刺激举措帮助推动增长，但中国的债务负担也因此激增。
Overall debt in China was equal to slightly more than one year’s economic output as recently as 2008. It now stands at 2.5 years’ economic output — above levels considered dangerous in other countries. The debt is still rising, and most of it is owed by companies.
近在2008年的时候，中国的整体债务还只略高于一年的经济产出。如今的债务水平相当于2.5年的经济产出——高于其他国家认为的危险水平。债务仍在不断增加，其中大部分是公司债务。
The stock-for-debt strategy speaks to the underlying trouble at many companies.
以股抵债的策略证明了很多公司存在潜在麻烦。
China Huarong Energy is one of dozens of Chinese shipbuilders in financial distress as prices worldwide for new ships have halved in the past two years. It is a similar story for steel makers, cement makers and many other businesses in heavy industry.
由于全球新船价格在过去两年降了一半，数十家中国造船公司陷入财务困境，中国华荣能源股份有限公司是其中之一。钢铁、水泥制造商及重工业领域的其他公司也面临类似的困境。
China Huarong Energy has been a dismal performer on the Hong Kong stock market. Its shares have tumbled even more steeply than broad mainland Chinese stock indexes, falling 83 percent since late April 2015.
中国华荣能源公司在香港股市表现不佳。其股价的跌幅甚至超过中国内地大盘指数，自2015年4月末以来降低了83%。
The stock-for-debt swap is taking shape as Hong Kong financiers say that China’s bad debt problem has worsened appreciably in recent weeks. The problem, they said in recent interviews, is that more companies are stopping payments on their loans from mainland Chinese banks with the country’s economy continuing to slow.
在出现这种以股抵债的做法同时，香港金融机构表示，中国的坏账问题最近几周明显恶化。他们最近接受采访时称，问题在于随着中国经济继续放缓，越来越多的公司开始停止偿还中国内地银行的贷款。
That has begun to produce ripples in China’s financial system. Desperate borrowers have pledged in recent weeks to pay several percentage points in extra interest to borrow in Hong Kong, after finding that banks and other financial institutions on the mainland were reluctant to lend.
这开始在中国金融领域引起波动。在发现内地银行及其他金融机构不愿贷款后，急切的借贷者最近几周愿意多支付几个百分点的利息，以便在香港获得贷款。
HSBC warned on Thursday that allowing borrowers to pay in shares was a limited solution to bad debt problems. International bank standards on capital assign a large penalty to holdings of shares, meaning banks have to hold extra money against the stock.
汇丰银行(HSBC)周四警告称，对于坏账问题来说，允许借贷者以股抵债是一个有限的解决方案。国际银行资本标准会对持股处以高额罚款，这意味着银行必须持有比股票多的资金。
But China’s five biggest banks have somewhat more capital than the standards require. So they may be able to swap some loans for shares without falling below the required minimums for capital, but are unlikely to resolve large portions of their portfolios of troubled loans through this method.
但中国五大银行拥有的资本比标准要求的多。因此它们或许能够进行一些以股抵债的交易，而不会出现资本少于最低标准的情况，但它们不太可能通过这种方法解决大部分涉及不良贷款的投资组合。
“We think it is unlikely to be of significant scale given there are limited ways of replenishing” capital once it has been allocated to offset equity holdings, HSBC said in a research note.
汇丰银行在一份研究报告中指出，鉴于一旦将资本拨出用于抵消持股，“补充资本的方法有限，我们认为不太可能大规模采用这种方法。”
