译者 lfmoh
David Huan had big dreams for his business, a factory in central China that makes picture frames ranging from glossy wood to the gilded and baroque. He wanted to expand production, and add new equipment and 400 to 600 workers atop the 400 he already employed.
奂大伟（音译）在生意上有很多很大的梦想，想在华中地区建个制作画框的厂子，能做木质滑边画框，能做镀金画框，也能做巴洛克风格的画框。尽管现在他已经有400人了，他还想扩大生产规模，添点设备，再招400到600个工人。
The demand was there last spring, he said on a recent afternoon. But his bankers weren’t. They balked at lending him money to buy equipment — and today his export-oriented business is about where it was six months ago.
前几天下午接受采访时他说道，这个想法去年春天就有了。但是，银行就不给贷款。贷款给他买设备，银行定不下来，所以，他的这个做外贸生意还和六个月前一样。
“I feel like I’m walking in place,” he said.
“我感觉我现在停滞不前。”他说道。
He has lots of company. While many businesses in the United States struggle to stay afloat and workers collect unemployment checks, China has the opposite problem: an economy, pumped up by expansive lending by state-controlled banks, which is growing too fast to keep inflation and speculation in check.
他有很多合作伙伴。当美国存在着很多企业都挣扎在温饱线上，工人们纷纷下岗的经济问题时，而中国经济却相反：央企银行的过多贷款，导致经济发展过快，引起通货膨胀和投机倒把。
Beijing’s solution: Create an artificial shortage of credit. The central government has set stringent though undisclosed limits on how much money each bank can lend, clamped down on real estate speculation by limiting the number of mortgages allowed for each citizen and begun cracking down on many forms of semilegal and illegal lending. After months of steady tightening, the controls have finally begun to bite into inflation, business growth, real estate prices and lending.
为解决这一问题，北京的办法是：人为地收缩信贷。中央政府严格限制银行可以贷款的金额，为了限制炒房控制居民买房的数量，打击民间高利贷。经过数月的信贷缩紧措施，通货膨胀、投资增长、房地产和信贷最终都得到了抑制。
Lending by Chinese banks jumped 32.5 percent in 2009 in inflation-adjusted terms. That growth slowed to 13.3 percent in 2010 and 7.3 percent in the first nine months of this year. Lending to small businesses has grown slightly faster. But there are so many small businesses and they are expanding so quickly that competition for these loans is especially fierce and difficult, said Nicholas R. Lardy, an economist at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
2009年通货膨胀调整期，银行借贷增长32.5%。2010年下降到13.3%，今年前九个月下降至7.3%。小型企业借贷增长较快。华盛顿彼得.彼得森国际经济研究所经济学家尼古拉斯.拉迪说到，小型企业数量多且自身发展迅速，所以小型企业间的借贷尤为激烈和困难。
The policy makers’ principal goal is to tamp down inflation, which has played a repeated role in causing social unrest, including during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Despite a goal of limiting inflation to no more than 4 percent a year, prices have stubbornly remained about 6 percent higher this autumn than a year ago for consumers based on official gauges — and up to twice that by the estimate of many private economists.
制定政策的主要目的是打压通货膨胀，因为这是引起社会动荡的百年不变的原因，1989年的那场事件就是个例子。尽管今年制定的通货膨胀率要限制在4%以下，但是今年秋季的消费者价格指数同比增长仍然保持在6%以上，这可比很多经济学家预测的高一倍。
The worst of the credit squeeze this year has compelled at least a few business people to flee the country or even commit suicide. They did so after borrowing money at usurious rates of up to 5 percent a month — an 80 percent annual rate — from loan sharks or neighborhood lending pools and then finding that their speculative investments with the money did not pay off.
今年的信贷缩紧，导致了好几起恶性事件，一些企业家迫于资金压力逃亡国外，有的甚至自杀。他们向高利贷（利率每月高达5%，一年就是80%）或是亲属朋友们借钱，借完钱后发现之前的投机行为失败，还不上钱，因此走向了不归路。
But the credit squeeze is far broader. In more than a dozen recent interviews at the Canton Fair here, the country’s largest export trade fair, every business owner or sales manager described increasing difficulties in borrowing money — as well as strategies that banks and borrowers alike are using to cushion the effect of the new lending restrictions.
不得不说，信贷紧缩的面太广了。在全国最大的外贸交易会广交会上采访了十几个企业老总和销售经理，他们都说银行和贷款人为了解决信贷新出的限制条例而想出一些折中办法，这些办法使得借钱越来越难。
Some banks are requiring lenders to personally guarantee corporate loans and put up considerably more land and factory equipment as collateral. Others lend money only if borrowers agree to redeposit up to half of the loan in the same bank at a much lower interest rate. The practical effect is that the borrower pays a much higher interest rate than the official, heavily regulated interest rate for loans, usually 7 or 8 percent.
一些银行要求贷款人以个人名义担保公司贷款，而且还要拿出更多的土地和工厂设备当做抵押。有些银行要求借贷人借款后要存上借款额一半的存款，而且利率要比常规存款利率低，才同意贷款。实际上，这样做法是让借贷者偿还比常规贷款更多的利息，常规贷款利息一般在7或8个百分点。
“If the bank lends you one million, they ask for 500,000 back as a deposit,” said Elaine Yan, the import and export manager at the Wuxi Zontai International Corporation, a trading company specializing in brightly colored shower curtains and bath mats. The company has decided not to borrow money at all, meeting its modest financing needs through retained profits.
“如果银行借你一百万，你得存上50万才行。”无锡中泰国际贸易有限公司进出口贸易经理伊莱恩.严说道。这家专做彩色浴帘和浴垫的外贸公司决定不贷一分钱，通过留存收益来满足正常的财政开销。
Daunted by such terms, Helen Huang, the owner of a company producing chrome-plated paperweights, turned to a neighborhood lending pool last year. The $3.1 million she borrowed helped finance a $7.9 million land purchase so her company, the Shijiazhuang Harmony Import and Export Company, could build a factory
在借贷如此紧缩的压逼下，生产镀铬压纸器的老总黄海伦去年不得不向民间借贷求助。她借了310万美元，买了块售价790万美元的一块地，在这块地上，建起了她的公司，石家庄祥和进出口贸易公司。
The lending pool, run by friends, charged only 7 percent a year, she said — similar to what a bank loan would have been, but without onerous paperwork or redeposit requirements. The friends were seeking to earn more than the meager, regulated interest paid on bank deposits, currently 3.5 percent for a one-year certificate of deposit — a rate so low that, with 6 percent inflation, bank deposits actually lose buying power.
这个民间借贷是他朋友们经营的，每年的利息才7%。她说，这个和银行贷款利息没啥区别，而且还不用上交繁琐文件或是接受存款的要求。她朋友借她钱的利息会比存在银行赚的多，一年期的存款利率才3.5%，比6%的通货膨胀率低很多。实际上，银行会失去越来越多的储户。
China has a long tradition of such family-and-friend lending pools, which finance many entrepreneurial businesses whose creditworthiness may be hard for banks to assess. The legality of these pools is murky and depends partly on the extent to which they rely on new deposits to help pay interest to earlier investors.
中国历来有在亲戚和朋友间借贷的传统，对于很多企业家们来说，他们的信誉很难符合银行的要求，而在朋友和亲戚间，他们符合。这种借贷一般都是地下组织，规模在一定程度上由早期投资者的投入金额确定。
With banks restricted from lending, businesses are taking different tacks to raise money. Some ask customers to make larger deposits when they place orders, for example, so that the factories can use the cash to pay for raw materials.
银行信贷紧缩，企业则采取不同的办法生钱。举个例子，一些企业要求顾客下订单时要预存更多的预付款，这样他们才能有更多的现金购买原材料。
“I do try to ask for more deposits upfront, but customers are resistant,” said Ms. Huang, the paperweight maker.
“我试着要求顾客付多点预付款，但是顾客对这样的做法很抵触。”生产压纸器的黄总说道。
The government’s tight grip on lending is producing results: Consumer inflation is slowly subsiding by official measures, to 6.1 percent in September from a peak of 6.5 percent in July. But in its place, one new concern is whether state planners have tightened too much.
政府信贷紧缩正产生这样的疑问：中央政策让消费价格指数降得很慢，从7月份6.5%的顶端到9月份的6.1%而已，既然成效这样低的话，人们就开始关心一个问题，为什么国家政策要勒得这么紧？
Beyond slowing factory expansions, the lending curbs have hit real estate developers particularly hard, said Stephen Green, the chief China analyst for Standard Chartered Bank. Many speculators, betting on ever-rising land prices, have parked their money in newly built offices or apartments that are largely vacant.
渣打银行中国首席分析师斯蒂芬.格林说，先撇开企业发展受阻不说，信贷紧缩对房地产开发商打击很严重。一些期望房价高企的炒房客，把他们的钱都投到了新建的房子上，留下了一大堆空置房。
With credit scarce, some are unable to roll over the loans used to build the developments. While well-financed developers are barely cutting prices, weaker developers have begun quietly discounting new apartments by up to 30 percent in the last month; the latest official figures for changes in real estate prices were not yet available. Others may be forced to sell or rent property at a deep discount, winding up underwater, like some American homeowners.
由于缺乏信用，一些房地产开发商无法像以前那样贷款，再重新发展。一些经营良好的开发商很少降价，而上个月那些经营不善的开发商对新开盘的房子开出了七折购房价，最近官方统计的房地产价格还不足以显示出房地产现在的窘局。一些开发商可能就像一些美国房主，被迫以更低的价格卖出或者出租，或停业结算。
Cooling off land speculation was a major goal of the government’s tightening, Mr. Green said. But if the credit tightening isn’t carefully calibrated, he added, it could hit both developers and the economy too hard.
格林先生说，政府信贷缩紧的主要目的就是打击炒房客，但是信贷缩紧过了火，不仅会拖垮开发商，也会拖垮经济。
“I think generally the economy is showing signs of sand in the wheels — it’s beginning to slow things down,” he said of the tightening measures. “If it turns out to be a macro problem, that’s one of the things that will cause the government to loosen policy sooner.”
他说紧缩政策：“我觉得经济大体上表现出和车子在沙滩上走一样——开始走得慢了，如果有结论得出，确实是宏观经济出了问题，那么政府会很快松绑政策的。”
And in fact, there are hints of just that. The State Council, China’s cabinet, said in late October that it would experiment with lowering the value-added tax, which is typically 17 percent, at least for service businesses, potentially putting more money into circulation. Premier Wen Jiabao also signaled some relaxation, saying late last month that planners would eventually “fine-tune” policies to ensure adequate growth in credit and the money supply.
实际上，有迹象表明宏观经济出了点问题。10月底，国务院宣布，降低以前17%的增值税。这个消息至少对于服务行业来说，可以有更多了利润来经营。温家宝总理也释放出一些松绑的信号，上个月末说到，会对政策进行微调，保证充足的信贷。
While many business people are dismayed by the scant availability of credit, they are also painfully aware of inflation. Rapid economic growth has exposed shortages, particularly labor shortages, and sent prices soaring.
很多企业在遭受信贷紧缩苦难的同时，也遭受着通货膨胀的痛苦。快速的经济增长暴露出多方面不足，尤其是市场劳动力的不足，因此造成劳动力价格攀升。
Ms. Huang, the paperweight maker, said that pay for skilled workers who can operate chrome-plating equipment had doubled just in the last year, to $630 a month. Even with that increase, she has so much trouble finding workers that orders received last month will not be filled until March, she said.
生产压纸器的黄总说，能操控镀铬设备的技术工工资比去年涨了一倍，一个月630美元。虽说工资涨了，但是招工依旧困难。她说，如果还找不到足够的工人，上个月的订单得到明年三月才能完成。
Demand is surging even for unskilled workers in interior provinces far from the prosperous coast. Mr. Huan said that competition for labor from other businesses had forced his company, Tennon Frame in Luoyang, a city in inland Henan Province, to raise wages this year to $150 a month before overtime and benefits, compared with $95 a month early last year.
远离繁华的沿海省份的内陆省份，普工的需求也越来越多。河南省洛阳画框制作公司的奂总说，公司间招工竞争使得他不得不把今年的普工工资提到150美元一个月（去年每月工资95美元），还不算加班工资和福利。
“It’s crazy — China is going crazy,” he said.
他说：“疯了，中国要疯了。”
from 译言-每日精品译文推荐 http://article.yeeyan.org/view/169837/230765
