Speed and Courage: Banks in China Must Get Lending Right
Riding with The Wall Street Journal's driver along Beijing's clogged boulevards is exhilarating. The streets have the familiar white lines dividing the lanes. The traffic lights turn from red to green. White-gloved traffic cops look stern and competent.
But it's a mirage. Cars move on crowded thoroughfares with little regard to quaint conventions such as lanes or rights of way. Bicyclists maneuver as if they were driving sport-utility vehicles that would win any collision. And pedestrians stride into intersections as if staring at a car will embarrass its driver into stopping. Rush hour sometimes seems a gigantic pileup about to happen.
The Chinese banking system is something like that. Increasingly, it has the trappings of a modern banking system familiar to Westerners. It has rules about limiting loans to those likely to pay them back, a system of rigorously classifying loans that have gone bad and pressuring banks to collect or write them off, and a new bank regulatory agency with a seasoned, tough-talking banker at its helm.
But the banking system, too, sometimes seems headed for a massive pileup.
Like many things in China, the banking system is huge, among the largest in the world. No other country at China's stage of development -- average income is less than $1,000 a year -- has such a big loan portfolio relative to the size of its economy. The four big state-owned banks have 120,000 branches and 1.4 million employees.
China's banks are big, in large part, because the Chinese people save so much -- about 35% to 40% of their annual incomes, second only to Singaporeans, according to the International Monetary Fund. The Chinese people put their savings into bank accounts because they have no alternative and because, with good reason, they trust that the government will guarantee their savings. The economic role of the banks is to put those savings to profitable use by lending them to finance business investment that will allow China to keep growing rapidly.
Before China's embrace of market capitalism, the banking system was simply the way the government doled out credit to state-owned enterprises. The question is, how much do the banks retain that role?
By official statistics, something close to 30% of the loans on the books of China's big banks are "nonperforming," meaning they are unlikely to be paid back. The new bank regulator, Liu Mingkang, is pushing banks to reduce that, by collecting some or all of the money owed, or unloading the loans to companies that can do that or seize and sell the collateral. But progress is slow.
That essentially is solving yesterday's (albeit large) problem. Tomorrow's potential problem is that the banks are lending so readily today -- loans are up more than 20% from a year ago -- that private analysts fear a large chunk of those loans won't be paid back either. Mr. Liu, in an interview, insists that isn't so. No more than 2% or 3% of recent loans are going sour, he estimates.
"People are better at risk management now with our advice and warnings," he says. Perhaps.
But John Langlois, Morgan Stanley's man in Beijing, says the banks aren't capable of lending so much so fast without making mistakes. "You can't monitor that kind of growth with your existing staff. That means there are hidden problems on the balance sheet."
Rapid lending is essential to sustaining China's rapid growth, Mr. Liu says. "Growth is needed to leave us room to maneuver for reforming the state-owned enterprises. We need growth of 8% or 9%. Otherwise, the hurdles to the government policy to take reforms will be huge."
That's true. But if the banks are lending wildly to keep the economy going, many of those loans are probably going to what's known here as "tofu [bean curd] projects" -- office towers and shopping malls that never get occupied. Yet freeing banks to turn down loan applications from state-owned enterprises and to charge higher interest rates to riskier borrowers will require not only new bank management, but a significant amount of political courage. It would require the Chinese Communist Party to relinquish even more of its control over the economy, and it risks accelerating the layoffs at state-owned enterprises without the assurance that other employers will hire fast enough.
But there are risks to sticking with the old ways, too. The government inevitably gets stuck with the tab if state-owned enterprises don't pay back the loans made by state-owned banks, adding significantly to the government debt.
More importantly, banks that make bad loans are squandering a society's savings. China can ill afford to waste savings on unproductive projects when there are many productive projects to be financed so that its economic miracle lasts and benefits the next generation.
中国银行业慎防"连环事故"
乘车行驶在北京拥挤的街头是件愉快的事。熟悉的交通标志线将路面分成几条车道，交通信号灯由红转绿，戴著白手套的交通警察一脸严肃，看上去精明强干。
但四周的景观却令人难以置信：汽车在拥挤的道路上自顾行驶，根本无视不得越线或靠右行驶等交通规则；骑自行车的人左冲右突，就像在驾驶一辆运动型多用途车，根本不担心被别的车撞到。行人大步流星地横穿马路，似乎只要瞪著汽车，司机就会难为情地把车停下。而在上下班的高峰期，重大的连环撞车事故似乎随时都可能发生。
而中国的银行体系在某种程度上就类似于这种情景。它已经越来越多地具备了类似于西方现代银行体系的特征。它确立了限制向有可能偿还贷款的借款人发放一定量贷款的规定，有一套将坏帐严格分级且要求银行尽力收回拖欠贷款或将坏帐冲销的制度；还刚刚成立了一个由经验丰富、言辞强硬的银行家领导的全新的银行监管机构。
但正如上文描述的情景那样，中国的银行体系有时似乎也正处于"连环撞车事故"的边缘。
中国的银行体系非常庞大。目前该国的人均年收入不足1,000美元，在同一发展水平的国家当中，没有任何一个国家的银行贷款业务量占整体经济的比例能与中国相匹敌－－中国的四大国有银行拥有120,000家分支机构和140万雇员。
中国的银行规模如此庞大，这在很大程度上是因为中国人热衷于储蓄。国际货币基金组织(International Monetary Fund)称，中国人通常将年收入的35%至40%存入银行，这一比例仅次于新加坡人。中国人将存款放入银行是因为他们没有其他投资选择，也因为他们相信政府能够对其存款提供保障。银行所起的作用是将这些存款贷给企业，以促进中国经济的持续快速增长。
在中国开始实行市场经济之前，银行只是政府向国有企业发放贷款的工具。目前的问题是，银行还能在多大程度上维持这种角色？
官方数据显示，中国大型银行帐面上接近30%的贷款为不良贷款。新的银行监管机构负责人刘明康要求银行设法降低不良贷款比率，方法主要包括收回部分或全部贷款，或者将贷款转让给能够做到这一点的公司，或者取得抵押品并将其拍卖。但这一过程进展得很缓慢。
从根本上来讲，上述措施解决的仍是过去的遗留问题（虽然问题很大）。而将来潜在的问题是，银行目前很容易地就放出贷款，中国今年的贷款规模较上一年度增长了20%还多。私人部门分析师担心，这些贷款中的很大一部分也会收不回来。刘明康在采访中坚持认为，这种情况不会发生。他估计，近期发放的贷款中会变成坏帐的应不超过2%-3%。
他表示，目前在监管当局的建议和警告下，银行的风险管理水平提高了。也许如此。
但摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)驻北京的朗格卢瓦(John Langlois)表示，在贷款规模如此之大、增长速度如此之快的情况下，银行很难不犯错误。他表示，依靠现有的雇员无法监督增长的贷款，这意味著资产负债表背后隐藏著潜在的问题。
刘明康表示，贷款快速增长对保持中国经济的快速增长是十分必要的。中国政府需要8%或9%的经济增长率以便推进国有企业的改革。否则，政府实施改革政策遇到很大的羁绊。
这一点无庸置疑。但是如果银行为保持经济增长而疯狂放贷，而贷款中的很大一部分可能被投入到所谓的"豆腐渣工程"－－比如那些长期闲置的办公楼和购物中心，他又该作何评论呢？但是，要让银行拒绝国有企业的贷款申请或向高风险的借款人提高利率，则不仅需要新的银行管理措施，在政治上也需要很大的勇气。这将需要中国共产党更多地放弃对经济的控制，也将冒著国有企业将加速裁员的风险。
但是走老路也存在著风险。如果国有企业不偿还国有银行的贷款，最后政府不得不代为还帐，而这将大幅增加政府的债务。
更重要的是，制造坏帐的银行糟蹋的是社会的存款。中国无力承担在没有收益的项目上浪费存款，而同时很多社会急需的、能有良好收益的项目却在渴望融资
