中资银行崛起：“北京共识”PK“自由经济”

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　　中国国有银行的崛起惊艳世界，但这一成功终将迫使其转变它们赖以成功的模式。
　　过去十年，没有什么比中国银行业翻天覆地的变化更能力证西方金融势力的相对衰落了。当欧美银行还在忙于应对危机，中国银行却已从过去呆账累累的共产主义官僚机构中脱胎换骨，跻身世界强手之林。
　　中国农业银行（下称农行）发行上市宣告了这一转型的最终实现，自此五大国有银行全部完成上市。即使按中国的标准，农行的规模也非同小可：3.2亿客户，44.1万员工，其支行数目甚至比许多华尔街公司的交易台还要多。目前世界上市值最高的十大银行里中国占据四席，而2004年这个数字还是0。德意志银行、英国巴克莱银行等更具知名度（也更加国际化）的银行同中国的国有银行相比简直成了小不点。人们很自然会想，是否不止是西方的金融企业日薄西山：一整个自由经济时代是否也正被国家管理金融的“北京共识”所取代？这一结论是很简单明了，但它似乎存在方向性的错误。
“不管白猫黑猫，抓到老鼠就是好猫。”
　　整个银行业都知道，排名可能会造成误导。尽管如此，中国银行的崛起仍要比80年代的日本稳健不少。中国的金融业潜力无限--农行只有不到1%的散户客户拥有抵押贷款。中国的银行又在金融危机中化险为夷，而这主要归因于它们从未完全脱离对政府的依赖。因此，虽然它们效益不错，还顶着上市公司的帽子，但其大部分股权仍掌握在国家手中，高层人员也由**钦点，且薪酬只有西方同行的九牛一毛。这些国有银行的领导，身兼**政要与企业高管二职，受惠于上级机关而非股票市场。与此同时，银行监管机构采取的手段，如贷款上限、存款储备金率等，都被视作原始霸道，早就为其他主张“点到为止”的国家所淘汰。另外，这套体系十分封闭。一些外国银行拥有中国公司的少数股权，但他们自己的公司在大陆仅有不到1%的市场盈利份额，而中国本土银行的海外盈利也低于其总盈利的4%。
　　这种“爱国主义模式”一直颇见成效。发达国家曾试图通过央行借款给私人银行来复苏经济，令人失望的是，这些银行却将央行注入的流动资金囤积起来。而1999年经历了亚洲金融危机之后，中国官员则去掉了央行作为中间人的环节，直接要求其他银行增加信贷。于是，贷款有了长足的增加，2008年到2009年其占GDP的比重由102%上升至127%。从穿过田间陇上的高速公路到浦东新区拔地而起的幢幢洋房，这笔贷款几乎来者不拒。中国经济于是保持了强劲增长，并因此赢得了众多仰慕者。在印度和巴西，认为国有银行应帮助抵消经济周期的消极影响已不再是退步的想法。甚至在银行私有化的富裕国家，监管人员也在关注中国各种信贷监控手段。共产党的命令经济已被换上了“审慎的宏观监督”的标签。

　　但即使是这些仰慕者也不能不注意到中国的坏账问题。有些人认为，资本主义民主国家在制造不良贷款上的天赋无可匹敌，而如今他们应该把中国也考虑进去。数十年的管理不善致使90年代后期中国约有三分之一的贷款沦为呆坏账，它们大多出自那些半死不活的国有企业。收拾掉这个烂摊子展现了中国首屈一指的救市能力。1998年起，单单在五大国有银行，中国就注入了相当于4200亿美元的资金，超过美国问题资产救助计划基金的支出。中国进行的金融改革也旨在杜绝同类现象的发生。
　　但一些人害怕的事终于在最近毫无节制的信贷热潮后重演了。最让人担心的莫过于那些由地方政府牵头用于基础设施建设的贷款（约占未偿还贷款的六分之一）以及房地产泡沫下的房地产融资和抵押贷款（占总数的五分之一，其中部分与基础设施建设贷款重合）。中国的银行家称他们心情轻松，但一些投资者却寝食难安，眼见着官员贪污腐败，到处大修公路，商场无人光顾。
　　尽管这些坏账可能后果很严重，但还不至于打垮银行业的“北京模式”。即使大部分呆坏账最后都被一笔勾销，整个系统尚能消化由此带来的冲击。部分功劳属于今年一项出色的调控政策敦促各银行加紧筹集资金。若一切照计划进行，各行须将资本充足率升至约八分之一。但更大的“功臣”还是中国居高不下的储蓄率。大堆的超额存款使银行无须依靠多变的债券市场就能募集资金。银行也因此赢得了时间解决坏账问题，以高额贷款利润填补资金亏空。作为它们的坚强后盾，中国政府鲜有外债缠身，手持巨额外汇储备，绝对财大气粗。
较少中国特色的资本主义
　　诚然，只有一样东西能保证中国现行的银行制度寿终正寝：这一制度的成功。如果中国得以成功消化近来激增的贷款而不致陷入萧条，再通过减少投资、拉动消费实现经济的重新平衡，这些银行必然需要在他们的收支平衡表上为个人贷款和小企业贷款腾出空间。基础设施建设和国有企业繁重的融资任务将转移到债券市场。随着客户拥有更多的融资渠道，银行贷款的利润空间受到挤压，从而迫使其开展如承保等多元化的资本市场活动。与贷款相关，银行储蓄的缓冲作用也将减小，原因是储蓄利息降低，且人们将现金投入到回报更高的股票债券市场（在此过程中赚取银行手续用）。
　　最终，中资银行虽仍控制在国家手里，但将和其他地方的银行更为相像。虽然这个变化的过程是循序渐进的。以目前的增长速度，中国的银行每隔几年就需要一次资金注入。政府可能不胜其烦--今年政府参与股Shi融资时就有些心不甘情不愿--转而允许减少自己的股份。随着中资银行宣告它们理所当然的全球领袖地位，它们会发现，每当政府插手主导便很难同外国做成大宗买卖。中资银行的冉冉升起既令世人惊艳，又带来了一丝恐惧。然而，他们并不是市场经济下金融制度的送葬者，而只是这种制度的半成品。
China's banks：Great Wall Street
The rise of China's state-backed banks is stunning. But success will force the model to change
Jul 8th 2010
THERE is no more potent symbol of the relative decline of Western finance than the revolution in Chinese banking over the past decade. While American and European banks have been busy blowing up, China's have been transformed from communist bureaucracies crippled by bad debts into something resembling world beaters.
That metamorphosis has been completed by the flotation of Agricultural Bank of China, the last of the five big state-owned banks to list (see article). Even by Chinese standards it is colossal, with 320m customers, 441,000 staff and more branches than many Wall Street firms have desks. Four of the world's ten biggest banks by market value are now Chinese. In 2004 none was. Better-known (and more global) lenders such as Deutsche Bank and Barclays look rather puny by comparison. It's natural to wonder if more than just firms are being eclipsed: whether a freewheeling era is being superseded by a "Beijing consensus" of state-managed finance. Though neat, such a conclusion looks wrongheaded.
Whatever their colour, these cats catch mice
As all bankers know, league tables can mislead. Still, China's rise is more solid than that of Japan's banks in the 1980s. Finance has huge potential in China-less than 1% of AgBank's retail customers have mortgages. And the country's banks had a good crisis, largely because they never entirely left the government's embrace. So although they make money and have the trappings of public companies, the state owns a majority stake and the Communist Party appoints the top brass, whose pay is a fraction of that of their Western peers. Those bosses, with their dual role as party bigwigs and chief executives, are beholden to a higher authority than the stockmarket. Their regulators, meanwhile, wield supposedly crude tools to control banks, such as lending caps and reserve ratios, long dismissed by "light touch" supervisors elsewhere. And the system is pretty closed. Some foreign banks have minority stakes in Chinese firms. But foreigners' own operations on the mainland have a market share of less than 1% by profits, while Chinese banks make less than 4% of their profits abroad.
This patriotic model has done well. Rich countries tried to kick-start their economies by getting central banks to lend to banks, which, frustratingly, have hoarded the liquidity. As in 1999 after the Asian crisis, China's politicians just cut out the middleman and told the banks to supply more credit. Loans grew spectacularly, from 102% of GDP in 2008 to 127% in 2009, funding everything from motorways through paddy fields to yuppie flats in Pudong. Growth stayed strong and China won many admirers. In India and Brazil it is no longer retrograde to argue that state-controlled banks should help counteract the economic cycle. Even in rich countries with privately owned banks, supervisors are eyeing the tools used by China's regulators to control credit. Communist Party diktat has been relabelled as "macroprudential supervision".
Even admirers, though, cannot fail to spot China's bad-debt problem. Those who think capitalist democracies have an unrivalled talent for generating dud loans should consider the Middle Kingdom. After decades of mismanagement, by the late 1990s perhaps a third of all loans were sour, most of them owed by zombie state-owned enterprises. Cleaning that up left China a world leader in bail-outs. Since 1998 it has injected the equivalent of $420 billion into the biggest five banks alone, more than the outlays of America's TARP bail-out fund. China's reforms were meant to stop this ever happening again.
A repeat performance is exactly what some fear after the latest binge. Most worrying are loans to infrastructure projects sponsored by local governments (perhaps a sixth of outstanding loans) and, given a frothy property market, real-estate financing and mortgages (a fifth of the total, with some overlap with infrastructure loans). China's bankers say they are relaxed but some investors are kept awake by visions of corrupt officials, roads to nowhere and deserted shopping malls.
Although potentially severe, these bad debts will not be the downfall of the Beijing model of banking. Even if a chunk of the loans is written off, the system can absorb the hit. That is partly thanks to an impressive regulator, which has prodded the banks to raise capital this year-by about an eighth, if all goes to plan. But it is mainly because of China's high savings rate. With piles of excess deposits banks do not rely on fickle debt markets for funding. That buys them time to earn their way out of a bad-debt problem, using their high lending profits to replenish capital. As a backstop, China's government, with little debt and large foreign reserves, has deep pockets.
Capitalism with fewer Chinese characteristics
Indeed, there is only one thing that will guarantee the demise of China's present model of banking: success. If China manages to digest its recent lending boom without a slump and then rebalance its economy away from investment and towards consumption, banks will need to free up space on their balance-sheets for lending to individuals and small firms. The heavy lifting of financing infrastructure and state companies will shift to bond markets. As customers have more sources of finance, banks' lending profits will be squeezed, forcing them to diversify into capital-market activities like underwriting. Banks' buffers of deposits should also shrink, relative to loans, as the savings rate falls and as people move cash into higher-return shares and bonds (earning banks fees in the process).
China's banks could then end up looking a lot like banks elsewhere, although the state will still have control. Yet even that could change gradually. At current growth rates China's banks will need capital injections every few years. The government may tire of these shakedowns-its participation in this year's equity raisings has been a little grudging-and allow its stake to be diluted instead. And, as China's banks claim their rightful place among the global leaders, they will find doing big foreign deals is hard when the government has a hand on the steering wheel. The rise of China's banks is stunning and a little frightening. Yet they are not the pallbearers of market-based finance, just a work in progress.
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