China’s financial system
The coming debt bust
It is a question of when, not if, real trouble will hit in China
May 7th 2016 | From the print edition

if not： もしそうでないなら 〜とは言わないまでも、〜とまではいかなくても、〜ではないにせよ［しても］ 〜でないとしたら一体何なんだ、たぶん〜に違いない 

中国の金融システム
今後の債務が破綻する
そうでないにしても、本当の問題が中国に起こる時期が問題だ。

CHINA was right to turn on the credit taps to prop up growth after the global financial crisis. It was wrong not to turn them off again. The country’s debt has increased just as quickly over the past two years as in the two years after the 2008 crunch. Its debt-to-GDP ratio has soared from 150% to nearly 260% over a decade, the kind of surge that is usually followed by a financial bust or an abrupt slowdown. 

credit tap：与信枠の蛇口



China will not be an exception to that rule. Problem loans have doubled in two years and, officially, are already 5.5% of banks’ total lending. The reality is grimmer. Roughly two-fifths of new debt is swallowed by interest on existing loans; in 2014, 16% of the 1,000 biggest Chinese firms owed more in interest than they earned before tax. China requires more and more credit to generate less and less growth: it now takes nearly four yuan of new borrowing to generate one yuan of additional GDP, up from just over one yuan of credit before the financial crisis. With the government’s connivance, debt levels can probably keep climbing for a while, perhaps even for a few more years. But not for ever. 

grimmer：厳しい
connivance：黙認

When the debt cycle turns, both asset prices and the real economy will be in for a shock. That won’t be fun for anyone. It is true that China has been fastidious in capping its external liabilities (it is a net creditor). Its dangers are home-made. But the damage from a big Chinese credit blow-up would still be immense. China is the world’s second-biggest economy; its banking sector is the biggest, with assets equivalent to 40% of global GDP. Its stockmarkets, even after last year’s crash, are together worth $6 trillion, second only to America’s. And its bond market, at $7.5 trillion, is the world’s third-biggest and growing fast. A mere 2% devaluation of the yuan last summer sent global stockmarkets crashing; a bigger bust would do far worse. A mild economic slowdown caused trouble for commodity exporters around the world; a hard landing would be painful for all those who benefit from Chinese demand. 

fastidious：細心の注意を払う
capping：の上限を設ける
credit blow-up：与信枠の膨張による破裂
immense：計り知れない

Brace, brace
Optimists have drawn comfort from two ideas. First, over three-plus decades of reform, China’s officials have consistently shown that once they identified problems, they had the will and skill to fix them. Second, control of the financial system—the state owns the major banks and most of their biggest debtors—gave them time to clean things up. 

Brace：備える
draw comfort from： 〜によって慰められる

Both these sources of comfort are fading away. This is a government not so much guiding events as struggling to keep up with them. In the past year alone, China has spent nearly $200 billion to prop up the stockmarket; $65 billion of bank loans have gone bad; financial frauds have cost investors at least $20 billion; and $600 billion of capital has left the country. To help pump up growth, officials have inflated a property bubble. Debt is still expanding twice as fast as the economy. 

At the same time, as our special report this week shows, the government’s grip on finance is slipping. Despite repeated efforts to restrain them, loosely regulated forms of lending are growing quickly: such “shadow assets” have increased by more than 30% annually over the past three years. In theory, shadow banks diversify sources of credit and spread risk away from the regular banks. In practice, the lines between the shadow and formal banking systems are badly blurred. 

blurred：ぼやけた

土曜日。今日はこれまで。中国は２００８年の景気刺激策以来、その金融緩和による貸付が焦げ付いたままだ。そのため、成長よりも返済利子の方が大きい。政府がこうした債務を管理するといってきているが実際出来ていない。影の銀行の存在が実際の銀行との区別が怪しくなってきている。

昨日は朝少しだ本を書いたが、今日の研修の資料がひどかったので、１日それに時間をついやしてしまった。今日は海野塾だ。資料は満足のいくところまでいかなかったが、なんとかまとめることができた。ではまた明日。