IF YOU were a Chinese worker you could have spent the past year toiling to earn a living. Or you could have bought some shares and sat on the sofa. Chinese equities have been on a bull run of epic proportions. The CSI300, an index of the biggest mainland stocks, has more than doubled over the past year. That looks positively anaemic compared with ChiNext, a market for Chinese startups which has tripled in 12 months; let alone with shares in Qtone, an online-education company that gained almost 1, 300% between its listing early in 2014 and the middle of this month. Its own directors have warned investors to be wary of “ignorant hype”.
在过去的一年中，如果你是一位中国工人，你可能一直在艰辛地的谋生，也有可能买了一些股票，坐在沙发上[等着赚钱]。一段时间以来，中国证券市场一直奔跑在百年一遇的牛市中。大陆的大盘股指数——沪深300已在过去的一年中翻了一番以上。但是，同在过去12个月中上涨了3倍的专为创业企业设立的创业板相比，这看上去相当苍白无力；更别提同在线教育企业全通教育的股票相比了——从2014年初上市到本月中旬，这家企业的股票已经上涨了将近12倍。该公司高管已经警告投资者，警惕“无知的炒作”。
The signs of overvaluation are everywhere. Stocks listed on the Shenzhen exchange, home to most tech firms, have an average price-earnings ratio of 64; for those on the exchange for small and medium-sized enterprises it is 80. (For most stocks a P-E ratio above 25 is considered expensive.) ChiNext is now priced at nearly 140 times last year's earnings, a valuation that puts it in the same league as NASDAQ, America's tech-heavy exchange, at the height of the dotcom frenzy. Companies whose shares are listed in Hong Kong and in Shanghai are trading at a 30% premium in the mainland, near a four-year high. Some are twice as valuable in China, even though mainland money can now more easily slosh southward into the Hong Kong market.
估值过高的信号比比皆是。在作为大多数科技企业大本营的深交所上市的股票，平均市盈率已经达到64倍；在为中小板上市的股票的平均市盈率是80倍（对于大多数股票来说，市盈率超过25倍就已经相当贵了。）如今，创业板的股票正在以接近去年盈利140倍的价格在交易，这是一种置其同美国以科技企业为主的交易所——纳斯达克——在科技股泡沫最疯时相提并论的估值。同时在香港和大陆上市的企业的股票，正在以30％的溢价在大陆进行交易，接近4年来的高点。尽管大陆的资金现在能够更容易的南下进入香港市场，但是在大陆，有些股票的价格仍然是其港股的两倍。
Retail investors, long the “greater fools” of stockmarket booms and busts, are piling in. In a single week in April, Chinese punters opened more than 4m new brokerage accounts. More than two-thirds of newcomers to the market left school before the age of 15, according to one study. Construction companies that have rebranded themselves as high-tech firms have seen their shares double.
长久以来一直是股市牛熊中“更伟大的傻瓜”的小投资者正在蜂拥而入。仅在4月的一周内，中国的小赌徒们就开通了超过400万个新交易账户。据一项研究，超过三分之二的股市新人在15岁之前就离开了学校。那些换个马甲把自己打扮成高科技公司的建筑企业已经亲眼看到自己股票上涨了2倍。
The markets are plainly soaring too high. At some point they will crash. Predicting exactly when is a fool's errand, but the warning signs are accumulating. Recent violent lurches in the share prices of Hanergy and Goldin, two Chinese firms listed in Hong Kong, may have been early signs of trouble. Housing markets in big cities are heating up again: that will probably lead investors to turn away from equities and back to property. Even the Chinese authorities have started warning of risks, though whenever the market has shown signs of correcting in the past they have lost their nerve and talked up share prices. More important than guessing when the crash will come, however, is the question of how serious its economic effects will be. Paradoxically, these are likely to be more damaging over the long term than the short.
简单地说，市场疯涨得太高了。他们会在某个点位崩盘。预测准确的时间点是徒劳的，但是警告信号正在累积。两家在香港上市的中国企业——汉能和高银——的股价前些时候的暴跌可能是麻烦的早期信号。大城市的房地产市场正在再次升温：这可能导致投资者撤离证券市场，重回房地产市场。即便是中国当局也开始警告风险，尽管以前每当股市显示出调整信号时，他们已经失去了警惕，并且还在大声谈论股价。然而，比猜测崩盘会何时到来更重要的是崩盘的经济影响会有多么严重这个问题。矛盾的是，这些影响的长期性可能比短期性具有更大的杀伤力。
Rally drivers
疯涨的推手
The near-term fallout will be painful for some, to be sure. If the market crashes, aggressive investors, whether individuals or firms, will find themselves in trouble. Many Chinese people have bought shares using borrowed money. The amount of margin financing, whereby investors borrow from brokers and put up extra collateral if the price moves against them, has more than quintupled over the past year to 2 trillion yuan ($325 billion). Adding up other forms of debt financing, Credit Suisse estimates that credit-financed share purchases have reached as much as 9% of market capitalisation, five times higher than the level in most developed markets.
可以肯定的是，对于某些人来说，短期的后果是痛苦的。如果市场崩溃，激进的投资者——无论是个人还是企业——将会发现自己身处困境。许多中国人一直在用借来的钱购买股票。融资——即投资者从经纪人那里借钱并为股价的反向变动提供额外担保的机制——总量在过去的一年中增加了5倍，达到2万亿元（合3250亿美元）。据瑞士信贷测算，加上其他形式的债务融资，靠信贷支撑而买入的股票价值已达到总市值的9％之多，比大多数发达市场的水平高出5倍。
Even so, the effect of a correction on the economy will be less dramatic than the bursting of a similar bubble in America or Europe. China's bourses are small relative to the size of the economy. The free-float market capitalisation is about 40% of GDP; the frothy ChiNext market is worth less than 10% of GDP. In most developed markets the equivalent figure is more than 100%. As a result, the stockmarket bonanza has been less important to China's growth than often imagined. Many had thought the rally would lead to more consumption as investors felt richer. In fact, households have allocated less than 10% of their wealth to shares.
即便如此，调整之于经济的影响将不如美国或欧洲的一次同样的泡沫破裂那样惊心动魄。中国的证券市场，相对其经济体来说，规模较小。自由流通的市值约为GDP的40％；泡沫化严重的创业板的市值还不到GDP的10％。在大多数发达市场中，同样的数字是100％以上。因而，股市繁荣之于中国增长的重要性并不像经常设想的那样大。许多人曾经以为，大涨会因为投资者觉得自己有钱了而带来更多的消费。实际上，家庭分配给股票的钱还不到他们财富的10％。
The mechanics of a stockmarket reversal may also mute its impact. Hong Kong's markets have no “circuit-breakers”—built-in limits on how far a stock can rise or fall without a suspension of trading—which helps explain the stomach-churning movements in Hanergy's and Goldin's shares. By contrast, the mainland market restricts gains and falls to a daily maximum of 10%, which means a downward correction will be a long spiral rather than a vertiginous drop.
股市逆转机制也有可能抑制泡沫破裂的影响。香港市场没有有助于解释汉能和高银股票的那种令人反胃的变动的“熔断器”——即股票在没有暂定交易的情况下能够上涨和下跌的幅度的内建限制。相比之下，大陆市场对于每日涨跌的最大幅度有着10%的限制，这意味这向下的调整将是一场漫长的螺旋式运动，而不是一场断崖式的下跌。
Crash or big bang
崩盘还是新生
More worrying is the lengthy shadow that a crash could cast over the development of China's equity markets. History does not bode well. After the country's last stockmarket bust, in 2007, share prices stagnated for nearly seven years. Investors lost faith; regulators slowed, and then froze, listings.
更令人担心的是崩盘可能给中国证券市场的发展可能投下的长期阴影。历史预示的是凶兆。在该国2007年的上一次股市崩盘后，股价停滞了将近7年。投资者失去了信心；监管者放慢了，乃至冻结了，［新股］的发行。
A similar chill today would be far costlier, for two reasons. First, the Chinese economy has depended disproportionately on borrowing in recent years: total debt has jumped from about 150% of GDP in 2008 to more than 250% today. More equity financing is needed to diversify the mix of corporate funding, and to take the pressure off a banking system that is weighed down by dud loans.
如今，一丝相同的寒意会让代价高出许多。原因有二。首先，近年来，中国的经济始终是过于依赖借钱：债务总量占GDP的比例，已经从2008年的150％左右大幅跃升至现在的250％以上。为了让企业的筹资方式多样化，为了减轻身手不良贷款重压的银行体系。更多的股权融资是必需的。系统的压力。
Second, it could slow the pace of financial liberalisation. Chinese regulators have made impressive progress recently—for example, by freeing the rates that banks charge for loans and dangle on savings products, and by relaxing capital controls. A bust might deter them from pressing ahead with more market-based policies.
其次，崩盘可能会让金融自由化的步伐慢下来。近年来，中国的监管者在这方面已经有了很大的进步。比如说，他们放开了银行的贷款利率和储蓄产品的浮动利率，放松了资本控制。一次崩盘可能会吓住他们，不敢推进更多以市场为基础的政策。
That would be a mistake. More market reforms, not fewer, are needed to put China's stockmarket on a sounder footing. Making it easier to short stocks would enable sceptical investors to put downward pressure on ballooning shares. Giving mainland punters more access to foreign stock exchanges would drain some of the speculative cash from China. Speeding up listing processes would ensure that the supply of equities can rise to meet surging demand; otherwise money just chases the existing pool of stocks. China cannot eliminate booms and busts from its financial markets, but it can remove the distortions that make them all too common.
这会是一个错误。更多的市场改革，而不是更少，是把中国股市置于一个更加坚实的基础之上所必需的。让卖空变得更容易能够让悲观的投资者给节节攀升的股票施加压力；让大陆的赌客更多地进入国外股市会从中国抽走一部分投机资金；加快上市进程会确保股权的供应能够增加，从而满足不断上涨的需求；不然的话，资金只会在现有的股票池中逐利。中国不可能从其金融市场中消除疯涨大跌。但是，她能够消除让这一切变得太过常见的种种扭曲。
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