中國面臨非法集資之困 Failed China schemes pull down hundreds of thousands of investors
Local financing networks are unravelling across China as the economic slowdown bites into one of the weakest but most enduring links in the financial system — pulling hundreds of thousands of investors down with it.
隨着經濟增長放緩，中國各地的地方融資網絡紛紛坍塌，導致數十萬名投資者蒙受損失。地方融資網絡是中國金融體系中最爲脆弱、但也最爲持久的環節之一。
These networks flourished as long as sentiment was high and rapid economic growth persisted. Now, however, investors are taking to the streets across the country as they seek to recoup their losses. Money ploughed into financing schemes that went bust in 2014 amounted to more than Rmb100bn ($16bn).
只要投資者情緒保持樂觀，只要經濟持續快速增長，這些網絡就會蓬勃發展。然而，現在各地投資者紛紛走上街頭，尋求挽回自己的損失。2014年出現兌付危機的融資項目的資金總數超過1000億元人民幣（合160億美元）。
Grassroots financing schemes operate in a similar manner to direct sales, with investors drawn in by the promise of high returns rather than, say, profits from selling cosmetics. Some are outright Ponzi schemes, while in others funds are funnelled into high-interest loans in the shadow banking sector or other unregulated investment projects.
民間融資項目以類似於直銷的方式運營，投資者被高額回報——而非（舉例而言）銷售化妝品——的利潤）所吸引。一些項目純粹是龐氏騙局，而在另一些項目裏，資金被輸送至影子銀行部門的高息貸款或其他不受監管的投資項目。
Investors come from every rank in Chinese society. On Monday hundreds of well-heeled urban professionals who had purchased high-interest rate products from the Fanya Metal Exchange united with distribution agents who sold them in an unusual protest — which continued on Tuesday — in the financial heart of Beijing. Meanwhile in the neighbouring province of Hebei, farmers are trying to retrieve their life savings invested with a rural businessman who promised high returns from better-quality wheat.
投資者來自中國社會的各個階層。本週一，數百名衣着考究的城市專業人士在北京金融街舉行了不尋常的抗議，這些人購買了泛亞有色金屬交易所(Fanya Metal Exchange)的高息產品，銷售這些產品的代理商也加入了抗議者的行列。週二抗議仍在持續。與此同時，在環繞北京的河北省，農民們正試圖拿回他們的畢生積蓄，此前他們相信一位農村商人對品質較高的小麥帶來高回報的承諾，紛紛入股該項目。
Such “illegal fundraising” is spreading from the wealthier east coast to central and western regions, according to data from the China Banking Regulatory Commission. FT research shows every province in China recorded at least one financing scheme collapse in the past 18 months.
中國銀監會(CBRC)的數據顯示，此類“非法集資”正從較富裕的東部沿海地區蔓延至中西部地區。英國《金融時報》的研究表明，在過去18個月裏，中國每個省份都出現了至少一起集資項目坍塌的情況。
“We are teetering at the tipsy-topsy edge of a crisis, so regulators need to be putting out fires here, fires there,” says Anne Stevenson-Yang, founding partner of investment researcher J Capital Research.
美奇金投資諮詢公司(J Capital Research)的創始合夥人楊思安(Anne Stevenson-Yang)表示：“我們正徘徊在危機的懸崖邊，監管機構需要到處滅火。”
The CBRC office that monitors illegal financing attributes the schemes’ proliferation to China’s economic slowdown and tighter credit along the financing chain. Cross-regional cases doubled in 2014 against the year before, while cases involving more than Rmb100m tripled and schemes involving more than 1,000 people quadrupled, it says.
負責監測非法集資活動的中國銀監會辦公室將此類案件層出不窮歸因於中國經濟增長放緩和融資鏈條上信貸趨緊。該辦公室表示，2014年的跨省案例同比增長了1倍，同時涉案金額超億元的案件增長了兩倍，參與集資人數逾千的案件增長了3倍。
“Many factors that can lead to an increase in illegal fundraising will not change fundamentally in the short term. We estimate that currently and in the future illegal fundraising will still occur frequently,” a CBRC report stated in May. “And in some regions, industries or areas, they will emerge violently.”
中國銀監會在今年5月發佈的報告中表示：“導致非法集資活動上升的許多因素不會在短期內發生根本改變。我們估計，在當前及今後一段時期，非法集資活動仍會頻繁發生。在一些地區、行業和領域甚至還可能表現得比較激烈。”
One of the largest cases reviewed by the FT involved an estimated Rmb8bn raised from 135,000 wheat farmers in three townships near the city of Xingtai, Hebei province.
英國《金融時報》研究的最大案件之一是河北邢臺附近3縣的13.5萬名種植小麥的農民集資約80億元人民幣。
The wheat farmers invested at least Rmb10,000 each — more than the region’s average annual household income — to buy into a “rural co-operative”. Members received discounts on fertiliser, rice and oils, subsidies for college students and the handicapped, and a gift of 100 packets of flour upon joining. The scheme’s collapse has devastated local families.
這些種植小麥的農民每個人至少投資了1萬元人民幣——超過該地區家庭平均年收入——用於入股一家“農村合作社”。該合作社的成員在購買化肥、大米和油料時享受折扣，大學生和殘疾人得到補貼，入股時還能拿到100斤麪粉作爲禮品。該騙局的崩塌摧毀了當地很多家庭。
“There are people who left their children and wives to avoid creditors, and I even heard that one peasant committed suicide because he owes tens of million of renminbi,” says Hao Xiaochun, a 61-year-old farmer who borrowed Rmb200,000 to invest in the co-operative that he cannot pay back.
“有人爲躲避債主而離開了老婆孩子，我甚至聽說有個農民因爲欠了數千萬元人民幣而自殺了，”61歲的農民郝小春（音譯）稱。他借了20萬人民幣投資這個合作社，如今無力償還。
Pyramid schemes, multi-layered sales networks known as chuanxiao and other too-good-to-be-true investments have flourished for years in China, especially in rust belt regions such as the north-east. Chinese authorities ban direct sales and dole out harsh punishments to the organisers of failed schemes to ward off the kind of pyramid scheme collapses that convulsed Russia and Albania in the 1990s.
多年來，金字塔騙局、被稱爲“傳銷”的多層級銷售網、以及其他好得不真實的投資產品在中國層出不窮，特別是在東北這樣的“鐵鏽地帶”（指那些重工業曾十分發達的老工業基地——譯者注）。中國當局禁止直銷，並對失敗項目的組織者施以嚴厲懲罰，以求避免出現上世紀90年代震動俄羅斯和阿爾巴尼亞的金字塔騙局崩塌風波。
The best-known pyramid scheme in China was a $385m ant-farming business that embroiled 1m rural investors in the north-east before it collapsed in late 2007. Its founder was sentenced to death.
中國最著名的金字塔騙局涉及一家3.85億美元的螞蟻養殖企業。蟻力神在2007年末倒閉前捲入了東北100萬農村投資者。其創始人被判刑。
Around that time, lending restrictions in some sectors, chief among them property development, caused the informal or “shadow” lending business to boom, with interest rates well above the state-set rates in banks. Trust products, wealth management products and completely unregulated lending pools could offer higher interest rates by arbitraging the difference.
差不多在那個時候，部分行業（其中主要是房地產開發業）存在貸款限制，這導致非正式或“影子”貸款業務迅速發展，其利率遠遠高於國家制定的銀行貸款利率。信託產品、理財產品以及完全不受監管的貸款池，可以通過息差套利來提供更高的利率。
The posterchild for this new business was a young woman from Zhejiang province named Wu Ying, who was sentenced to death in 2009 on charges of illegally raising Rmb770m after a “cash flow problem” triggered her arrest. A coalition of businessmen and rights activists successfully campaigned to have her sentence commuted, citing the importance of private financiers to China’s private industry.
這一新業務的標誌人物是浙江的年輕女士——吳英。在因“現金流問題”被捕後，她被控非法集資7.7億元人民幣，並在2009年被判處死刑。由商界人士和人權活動人士組成的一個聯盟開展活動，以私人金融家對中國民營產業的重要性爲由，成功幫她獲得了減刑。
In the years since, the industry has proliferated. Several of the schemes that came to light in the past year were run by local government officials or their relatives, raising further worries about the ability of Chinese financial or judicial authorities to regulate shadow fundraising. In one case in the central city of Nanyang in Henan province, the founder was a policeman who killed himself after his scheme failed.
從那時開始，非法集資行業迅速蔓延。過去一年中曝光的部分騙局是由地方政府官員或是他們的親屬運作，這引起了人們對中國金融或司法機構監管影子融資能力的進一步擔憂。在一起發生在河南省南陽市的案件中，騙局的製造者是一名警察，他在騙局崩塌後自殺了。
