Problems at China's Banks Overshadow Reform Effort
For China's state-owned banks, the bad news just keeps getting worse.
In another jolt to the banking industry here, China's national auditor said it had uncovered a $120 million fraud case in the mortgage-lending business of one the country's biggest state banks, China Construction Bank. The report, posted Thursday on the auditor's Web site, also detailed two fraud cases at a government policy-lending bank, Agricultural Development Bank of China, of more than $100 million.
The report is the latest in a string of disclosures regarding the health of China's banking industry. It also raises new concerns for China Construction Bank, because at least part of the problem involves fraud in the home-mortgage lending operations -- a business that China has been touting as a high-growth safe haven that could point the way forward for Chinese banks and efforts to reform them.
For now, however, attempts at bank reform are being overshadowed by a clearer sense of the depth of problems that banks face. Last month, the Hong Kong unit of China's premier foreign-exchange lender, Bank of China, replaced its top official, Liu Jinbao, over questionable loans to a Shanghai businessman, Zhou Zhengyi. After returning to Beijing, Mr. Liu was detained by authorities in an investigation. The case touched off a wider probe among government banks in Shanghai, where investigators suspect as much as $1 billion may have been misappropriated, according to people familiar with the matter. All the while, smaller scandals continue to percolate up at banks in other parts of the country, most of them involving alleged collusion between bankers, government officials and businessmen.
China's banks -- all of them government-owned -- are widely acknowledged to be technically insolvent. But the latest problems are bringing to the fore a fundamental question: Are China's banks, at once both the lifeline and the weak spot of this country's economy, moving closer or further away from a financial crisis?
There remains no simple answer to that question. What is increasingly clear, banking analysts say, is that efforts to fix the banks appear to be making little headway, and that far more drastic action is needed. Since banking reform began in earnest nearly five years ago, the government has injected $32 billion in capital at the country's four state banks, and financed the removal of another $170 billion in bad loans from the banks' balance sheets. It also has shut thousands of unprofitable bank branches and spent billions of dollars on new computer systems.
Yet the scope of the trouble remains overwhelming -- so big that some analysts refer to it as the world's largest potential banking crisis. Indeed, in a report issued earlier this week, Standard & Poor's Rating Services estimated that 50% of all loans outstanding from China's banks are nonperforming, an amount roughly equivalent to $500 billion, or 40% of China's annual economic output. Based on the pace of reforms, the ratings agency said, it could take the banks more than two decades to reduce their bad-debt levels to about 5%, which is generally considered a safe limit.
Chinese bank regulators reject those figures, saying the nonperforming loan ratio is closer to 25%. Even so, they, too, are starting to acknowledge that piecemeal reforms aren't working as they had hoped. Indeed, concern is also growing at foreign banks such as Citibank, a unit of Citigroup Inc., and HSBC Holdings Inc., which fear China could balk at opening up the banking industry to foreign competition, as Beijing promised to do under the terms of its membership in the World Trade Organization.
"If Chinese banks can't be fixed, then the government won't open the industry up, because they know local banks can't compete," said a foreign banker in Shanghai. "It's very simple: The government worries the entire domestic banking industry could collapse."
For China, the most pressing concern over bank reform is as simple as it is complex: accountability, and specifically how to force the banks to be responsible for the decisions they make. Because the officials who run China's banks are political appointees, many are often protected by their political patrons and thus allowed to escape punishment for making bad business decisions, bank and government officials say.
The question of accountability sits at the center of the recent mortgage-lending scandal at Construction Bank. According to a report posted yesterday on the auditor's Web site, officials at eight Construction Bank branches in southern Guangdong province made $120 million in fraudulent home loans to people who then used the money for other purposes. One person who received such a loan was the deputy director of the public-security bureau in Shanwei city in Guangdong, bank officials said. The current status of the loans isn't clear.
The report also detailed two fraud cases at a government policy-lending bank, Agricultural Development Bank of China, involving other types of loans of more than $100 million.
Home-mortgage lending has exploded since China began pushing private homeownership in the late 1990s, and more than $100 billion in such loans is outstanding. Construction Bank, the first such bank in China allowed to engage in lending to homebuyers, holds a large portion of such loans. It remains unclear how many of China's new home mortgage loans are problematic.
In its report, the government auditor said its findings were based on a "random" check at Construction Bank branches, suggesting it wasn't based on a comprehensive review of all loans outstanding. That, analysts said, suggests more problems could be uncovered in the future.
中国银行业问题重重，改革努力可能受阻
对中国国有银行来说，目前的形势可谓"屋漏偏逢连阴雨"。
中国国家审计署称，该部门在审计中发现中国建设银行(China Construction Bank)存在一起涉资1.2亿美元的虚假按揭贷款案。国家审计署周四在其网站上公布的报告中，还公布了中国农业发展银行(Agricultural Development Bank)的两起总额超过1亿美元的虚假贷款案的详情。
中国建设银行是中国四大国有银行之一，而中国农业发展银行是一家发放政策性贷款的银行。
这一消息再度暴露了中国银行业的健康问题，此前已有众多消息揭示中国银行业所面临的危机。报告使外界对中国建设银行产生了新的担心，因为该行的部分问题与虚假住房按揭贷款有关，而住房按揭贷款在中国迄今一直被认为是既安全又极具成长潜力的一项银行业务，是中国银行业未来的业务方向和银行业改革的起点。
各界对银行业问题的认识愈加深入，这至少在眼下多少为中国的银行业改革蒙上了阴影。上个月，中国银行(Bank of China)香港子公司的总裁刘金宝因与上海富豪周正毅贷款案有牵连而离职。刘金宝回到北京后被有关部门拘留调查。中国银行是中国最大的外汇银行，此案还引发了政府对上海国有银行的大规模调查。据知情人士透露，调查人员估计上海的银行有高达10亿美元的资金被挪用。与此同时，中国其他地区的银行也不断传出丑闻案，其中大多数都涉及银行工作人员、政府官员和商人相互勾结，骗取银行资金。
外界普遍认为，从技术角度看，中国国有银行已陷入资不抵债的境地。但银行业最近所暴露出来的问题使得人们不禁要问这样一个重要问题：作为中国经济的生命线，同时又是经济中最为薄弱的环节，中国的银行距金融危机是渐行渐近呢，还是渐行渐远？
这个问题还没有一个简单的答案。银行业分析师说，越来越清楚的一点是，银行业的改革努力似乎收效甚微，现在需要的是更为大刀阔斧的措施。自从5年前银行业改革正式启动以来，中国政府已向四大国有银行投入了320亿美元的资金，并帮助其清除了1,700亿美元的不良贷款。政府还关闭了数千家亏损的银行分支机构，并斥资数十亿美元，用于电脑系统的升级。
然而，银行业的问题仍非常严重，以致于一些分析师认为中国有可能爆发全球最大规模的银行业危机。 事实上，标准普尔评级服务(Standard & Poor's Rating Services)本周早些时候发布报告称，估计中国银行的所有贷款余额中有50%是不良贷款，约为5,000亿美元，相当于中国年度经济产值的40%。标普说，按照目前的改革速度，银行业可能需要20多年才能把不良贷款比率降至公认的警戒线5%上下。
中国的银行业监管部门否认了标普的数字，称中国银行业的不良贷款比率接近25%。即便如此，有关部门也承认，目前的这种小打小闹式改革的效果远不及他们原先的预期。事实上，花旗银行(Citibank)、汇丰银行(HSBC Holdings Inc.)等外资银行对于中国在对外开放银行业方面停滞不前的担心也在不断增长。
驻上海的某外国银行人士说，如果中国银行业的问题无法解决，中国政府就不会愿意对外开放这个行业，因为他们知道中国银行将无法与外国对手竞争。政府担心中国整个银行业可能崩溃。
就中国来说，银行业改革中最大的问题其实既简单又复杂，不外乎一个问责制，也就是如何迫使银行对其作出的决定负责。银行业人士和政府表示，由于银行的管理人员是政府任命的，很多人又有上面的人保护，因此，即使其决策有误，也不会受到惩处。 问责制也是建设银行上述虚假按揭贷款案的核心所在。国家审计署在报告中称，建设银行广州地区8家分行发生虚假楼宇按揭贷款案，借款人在获得贷款后将资金挪作他用，其中一人还是广东省汕尾市公安局某副局长。
自从中国于90年代末开始鼓励个人买房以来，住房按揭贷款就呈现急剧增长，目前此类贷款的余额已超过1,000亿美元。中国建设银行是首家获准从事该业务的国内银行，此类贷款中有很大一部分是该行提供的。目前尚不清楚中国住房按揭贷款中有多少存在问题。 国家审计署在其报告中称，上述问题是其在对建设银行的支行进行抽查时发现的。这意味著，报告并非是对所有房贷的全面审计，因此，今后可能还回发现更多问题。
