China's liquidity crunch has sent shock waves through its financial system. But the economy is in for more disruption if and when the authorities start tackling a long overdue restructuring of the country's banks. That means not only addressing the bad-loan aftermath of the recent credit expansion, but also revisiting an earlier, incomplete banking bailout. 中国的流动性紧缩已经使整个金融系统受到冲击。然而一旦政府开始进行拖延已久的银行业重组，这一领域将会面临更多打击。重组意味着不仅需要解决近期信贷扩张遗留的不良贷款问题，还要重新审视早先未完成的银行业救助行动。

The looming solvency crisis of the banks is by now a well-known story. Total debt after the financial crisis ratcheted up alarmingly, to 173% of GDP from 106% before. Total debt includes our estimates of household, net corporate, banks' shadow banking shenanigans, the grey economy, central and local government debt. That debt is rising much faster than GDP, which suggests funds increasingly are flowing to unproductive uses that will likely not be able to repay the loans. 银行业偿付能力危机迫在眉睫已经人尽皆知。金融危机过后，社会融资总量以令人担忧的速度大幅攀升，其占国内生产总值(GDP)的比例已从金融危机前的106%跃升至173%。社会融资总量包括家庭贷款、企业 融资额、银行的影子银行放贷、灰色经济领域贷款、中央和地方政府债务。社会融资总量增速一直快于GDP增速，这说明有越来越多的资金流向有可能无力偿还的非生产领域。

Kicking the can down the road through various forms of subtle and unsubtle regulatory forbearance, as Beijing has done in recent years, may no longer be an option. Insolvency in the banking system is now the main hindrance to opening the capital account. So long as Beijing is able to trap money inside the economy through capital controls, leaders can keep some liquidity in the country if not in the banking system. Lifting the controls would likely spark a capital outflow that would trigger a liquidity crisis and finally bring the solvency issues out of the woodwork. Reuters中国人民银行中国政府近几年一直或隐晦或直接地以各种形式提高监管容忍度来拖延这一问题，但是这种做法已不再适用。银行系统的偿付能力问题现在是开放资本账户的主要阻力。只要政府通过资本管制抑制资金外流，领导人就可以使一些流动性即便不能留在银行系统内也能够留在国内。取消这种管制可能会引发资本外流，进而引发流动性危机，最终将使银行业的偿付能力问题浮出水面。

This matters because Beijing's biggest problem with respect to growth right now is that the currency, the yuan, is overvalued. Rapid wage growth, slowing productivity growth and nominal yuan appreciation have rendered Chinese labor uncompetitive. A devaluation by fiat would provoke political pressure from China's trading partners. The only way Beijing can effect a depreciation would be to allow capital to leave the country. 开放资本账户很重要，因为中国政府目前在经济增长方面面临的最大问题就是人民币估值过高。薪资快速增长、生产率增速放缓以及人民币名义有效汇率上涨这些因素已经导致中国劳动力失去竞争力。如果采用政策性贬值，将会引来贸易伙伴国的政治压力。中国政府唯一可以采取的促使人民币贬值的方式就是允许资本流出中国。

So China's economic health will depend to a surprising degree on Beijing's ability to fix bank balance sheets. And here the news is worse than it appears. Not only are banks saddled with unrecognized bad loans from the most recent credit expansion. They also are falling behind on cleaning up earlier rounds of bad loans. 因此中国经济健康状况将在极大程度上取决于政府解决银行资产负债表问题的能力。这一问题比表面看起来还要糟糕。银行业目前不仅存在最近的信贷扩张产生的未确认的不良贷款。他们在清理此前的不良贷款方面也已经滞后。

In the late 1990s and 2000s, Beijing bailed out Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Construction Bank by shifting their bad debts to newly created asset-management companies (AMCs AMCX -0.57% ). This 'reform' mainly hid the bad debts in different parts of bank balance sheets. Banks were paid face value for their bad assets, but they had to accept the bonds issued on behalf of the AMCs-backed by the very bad debts that were supposed to be removed from bank balance sheets. 在1990年代末和2000年代，中国政府对中国银行(Bank of China)、中国工商银行(Industrial and Commercial Bank of China)和中国建设银行(China Construction Bank)施以援手，将他们的不良贷款转移到新创立的资产管理公司中。这一“改革”主要是将这些不良贷款掩藏在银行资产负债表的不同部分。银行按面值出售这些不良资产，但需要接受代表这些资产管理公司发行的债券，而支持这些债券的是原本应当从银行资产负债表上移除的不良贷款。

One clue that these bonds still represent exposure to bad loans is that Beijing is struggling to make good on them. The authorities have stopped publishing data on how much the AMCs recover from the underlying loans. In 2009, the bonds were rolled over for another 10 years when they had originally been slated to be paid down by then. 这些债券仍可能带来“不良贷款”风险，一个迹象就是北京难以偿还这些债券。当局已经停止发布有关资产管理公司从这些债券背后的贷款中追回多少的数据。2009年，这些原本应该已经还清的债券又展期了10年。

In 2011, these particular AMC bonds were valued on the balance sheets of the three large banks at 24% of bank capital on average, or 605 billion yuan ($98.8 billion at today's exchange rate). Bearing in mind the special paper issued by the Ministry of Finance in another clean-up operation in 1998, the overall bank exposure to the old bad debts was likely over 30% of bank capital for each of the Big Four. 2011年，这些特殊的资产管理公司债券在三大银行的资产负债表上显示的价值平均占银行资本的24%，约人民币6,050亿元（按当前汇率计算折合988亿美元）。再考虑到财政部在1998年的另外一项清理活动中发布的特别报告，对于四大银行中的每一家，这些潜在的旧坏账可能占其资本的30%以上。

Last year, the finance ministry paid off a significant tranche of the AMC-linked bonds from the government purse, reducing their share of bank capital to around 14% for the three banks involved. This marks the first time the government has committed to backing up its guarantees on the bonds. 去年，财政部用政府资金偿还了资产管理公司债券的很大一部分，这些债券占三家银行各家资本的比例随之降至约14%。这是政府首次出面偿还其担保的这类债券。

Yet the move also exposes how expensive it could be to resolve a shortfall that was supposed to have been cleared up a decade ago. Some 393 billion yuan of AMC bonds are still outstanding. Add to this the 270 billion yuan from the 1998 Ministry of Finance bond and the 393 billion on the Agricultural Bank's balance sheet from its pre-IPO 'clean up,' and the total is more than 1 trillion yuan. Observers should include the costs of bailing out that earlier bailout when calculating the total fiscal burden Beijing could face to restore banks to solvency. 然而，此举也暴露出要解决本该在10年前清理干 的问题代价可能有多高。仍有约人民币3,930亿元的资产管理公司债券尚未偿还。此外，加上1998年财政部发行的人民币2,700亿元债券，以及农业银行IPO前的“清理活动”在其资产负债表上产生的人民币3,930亿元，总额超过人民币1万亿元。观察人士在计算北京为恢复银行偿债能力而可能面临的总体财政负担时，还应该将早些时候的救助成本包括在内。

Meanwhile, the combination of bank insolvency and capital outflows is bad for financial markets. The liquidity crunch has already sent tremors through the interbank and bond markets, and things could well get worse. Interest rates will naturally trend upward as borrowers battle to attract funds. Smaller banks are much more dependent on interbank funding so interest rate increases will cause tremors between these institutions. Banks will no longer be able to just roll over loans and we could finally see the defaults, separating the productive investments from the unproductive investments. This will be a healthy but painful process. 与此同时，银行无力偿债加上资本外流，会对金融市场造成不利影响。流动性紧缩已经震动了银行间市场和债券市场，情况还可能变得更糟。随着借款人争夺资金，利率自然而然会上升。规模较小的银行更依赖银行间融资，因此利率上升将扰动这些机构间的融资。银行将无力继续展期贷款，最终可能出现违约，盈利的投资与不盈利的投资将会泾渭分明。这将是一个积极但痛苦的过程。

All of which illustrates the delicate task now facing Beijing. It's going to be much harder than generally realized for policy makers to push forward with important reforms if the reforms of a decade ago remain incomplete. 所有这一切凸显出北京目前面临的微妙任务。如果不完成10年前的改革，决策者要想推进重大改革，将比人们普遍认为的难度大得多。