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When Chinese conglomerate HNA paid 80 per cent over the market rate for a plot of land on the site of Hong Kong’s former airport in Kowloon late last year , there was little surprise. Many analysts simply assumed the lofty price was paid to get around the increasingly stringent controls on capital outflows from mainland China.
去年底，中国企业集团海航集团(HNA)支付高于市场价80%的价格拿下九龙原机场区一个地块时，人们并未感到惊讶。许多分析师只是认为，支付高价是为了绕开中国内地对资本流出的日益严格的管制。
In the past, when Chinese firms wished to buy companies or assets offshore, they could simply get the foreign branches of local banks to issue letters of credit offshore against cash they had on deposit back in China. However, today regulators in Beijing are discouraging such arrangements as they seek to keep capital from flowing out of the country and further weakening the currency. These efforts are part of a broader attempt to rein in leverage which increasingly threatens financial stability.
过去，当中国企业希望购买海外公司或资产时，它们只要找到中资银行的海外分支，以其内地存款为担保开出海外信用证，就可以了。然而，如今北京的监管机构开始限制这种做法，因为它们正想方设法阻止资本流出境外、进一步压低人民币汇率。这是旨在抑制杠杆的更宏观努力的一部分。杠杆对金融稳定造成了越来越大的威胁。
This comes just as Chinese investors are also increasingly using debt both to help make acquisitions and juice returns. While the People’s Bank of China is dedicated to reducing these sometimes invisible chains of borrowed money in the system, their efforts, ironically, could yet make the markets more volatile.
此时，中国投资者也越来越多地利用债务来帮助实施收购并提升回报。虽然中国央行(PBoC)致力于减少金融体系中这些有时看不见的借款链条，但讽刺的是，他们的努力可能使市场更不稳定。
In this game of chicken between a central bank determined to control the financial markets and squeeze speculators, prudent investors and imprudent borrowers can both get crushed. The PBoC must tread carefully as it squeezes out the leverage that has helped fuel bubbles, while avoiding the risk of a damaging crash in prices. All of the choices facing the central bank’s policymakers come with painful trade-offs. Low rates encourage investors to take risks in the search for yield, but high rates make the existing debt burden of companies ever more dangerous.
在这场决心控制金融市场和打压投机者的央行与投机者之间的懦夫博弈(game of chicken)中，谨慎的投资者和鲁莽的借款人都可能遭到碾压。中国央行必须小心行事，它既要清理掉助推泡沫的杠杆，又要避免价格发生破坏性崩盘的风险。央行政策制定者面临的所有选项都包含痛苦的权衡。低利率会鼓励投资者冒着风险去寻求收益，但高利率会使企业的既有债务负担变得更危险。
Worries about leverage in China, especially in the shadow banking system, are nothing new but still have the capacity to deliver unpleasant shocks. In the summer of 2015, few understood how much of the bull market in Chinese shares was driven by purchases made with borrowed money. More than a year on, the bond market is the subject of similar concern.
对于中国的杠杆、特别是影子银行体系杠杆的担忧，不是什么新鲜事，但仍有能力造成令人不快的冲击。在2015年夏天，很少有人清楚中国股市的牛市在多大程度上是由借钱炒股推动的。一年多之后，债券市场出现了同样的担忧。
Last week, the central bank engineered a dramatic, if not unprecedented, squeeze of liquidity in the offshore market that drove the overnight funding rate between banks higher. One effect of such a move was to make it more expensive to bet against the renminbi in Hong Kong, a major trading hub for the currency.
不久前，中国央行在离岸市场急剧收紧流动性（即便并非史无前例），推高了银行间人民币隔夜拆借利率。此举的效果之一，是提高在香港做空人民币的成本。香港是全球主要人民币交易中心之一。
By pushing up the rate that banks charge one another to borrow overnight, the central bank also hit prices in the bond market. This could ultimately lead to capital losses for investors, and has already forced some companies to cancel plans to sell debt.
中国央行推高离岸银行间隔夜拆借利率，也打击了债市价格。这可能最终导致投资者的资本损失，并已迫使一些企业取消了发债计划。
The problems have been building for some time. As a consequence of interest rates being kept low in the interbank market until late October, banks issued certificates of deposit and then put the proceeds in the bond market in a lucrative arbitrage, according to Jianguang Shen, chief Asia economist at Mizuho Asia Securities in Hong Kong.
这些问题已经酝酿了一段时间。根据香港瑞穗证券亚洲(Mizuho Securities Asia)首席经济学家沈建光的说法，由于到去年10月下旬银行间市场利率一直保持在低位，各银行发行存款单，然后将现金收入投资于债市，实现利润丰厚的套利。
Mr Shen now fears that some of the riskiest wealth management products through which investors secure access to the bond market involves using leverage of nine times. That is similar to the leverage in the riskiest slices of the subprime securities that wreaked havoc in the US mortgage market in 2008.
现在沈建光担心，让投资者得以投资于债市的一些风险最高的理财产品，使用了9倍的杠杆。2008年，造成美国抵押贷款市场重创的次级证券中风险最高的部分，其杠杆大致也在这一水平。
