Chinese banks risk becoming entangled in the fallout from a liquidity freeze at an exchange for rare metals that has also been providing high interest rate investment products through bank branches across the country.

通过全国各地的银行分支机构销售高收益投资产品的泛亚有色金属交易所(Fanya Metal Exchange)出现流动性冻结，由此衍生的风波可能将一些中资银行卷入其中。

Against a backdrop of renewed turmoil in the Chinese equity markets, there have been protests in the past two weeks in both Kunming and Shanghai as investors in the financial products sold by the Fanya Metal Exchange demand their money back. It emerges that some have already started taking their protests to the banks that distributed the products.

在中国股市再度出现震荡之际，过去两周，昆明和上海都发生了抗议活动，起因是购买了泛亚金融产品的投资者要求拿回自己的钱。有消息说，一些抗议者已经开始将矛头指向分销这些产品的银行。

Fanya is a forum for trading minor metals like indium and bismuth that has also functioned as a shadow banking conduit — not only leveraging metal deposited with the exchange as collateral for loans, but offering high interest investment products to retail investors.

泛亚是一家交易铟、铋等稀有金属的交易所，同时也充当影子银行管道——不仅利用交易所储存的稀有金属作为抵押获得贷款，而且还向散户投资者提供高利息的投资产品。

The exchange, which is based in Kunming, stopped disbursing funds this month to depositors. About $6.4bn in investments is frozen, according to estimates by Chinese media.

总部设在昆明的泛亚本月停止了向储户兑付资金。据中国本地媒体估计，约64亿美元的投资被冻结。

The exchange attracted regulators’ attention at least eight months ago but references to Fanya were later suppressed leaving potential investors ignorant of authorities’ concerns.

至少在8个月之前，泛亚就引起了监管机构的注意，但对泛亚问题的提醒后来被压下，使得潜在的投资者并未获悉当局的担忧。

The online report of a November 2014 meeting by the Yunnan provincial government on “tidying and reorganisation” of local exchanges included a warning by the head of the Yunnan branch of the China Securities Regulatory Commission that “risk at the Fanya Metal Exchange was noted as very large”.

2014年11月，云南省政府召开了一次关于“清理整顿”本省交易场所的会议。此次会议发布在网上的报告中含有中国证监会(CSRC)下属云南证监局局长发出的警告——“泛亚有色金属交易所风险巨大”。

Shortly after the report was published on the CSRC website it was reposted with that sentence removed, according to Strategic Metal Report, a metals information service that published the original and the redacted version in a November article. “It was pretty much immediate,” said Strategic Metal founder Terence Bell, adding that “within the next month or two” the exchange stopped announcing purchases of metals.

根据金属信息服务机构Strategic Metal Report在去年11月一篇文章中提供的那次会议报告的原始版和修改版可以看出，该报告被发布到证监局网站后不久就被替换掉，而那句话也被删除了。该机构创始人特伦斯贝尔(Terence Bell)说：“它几乎是立刻被撤换的，”并补充说，“一两个月后”，泛亚停止了发布收购有色金属的信息。

Retail investors are demanding their money back. One of the protesters said his mother invested Rmb1.5m ($242,000) in Fanya products purchased through her local Bank of China branch in Xinjiang, near the frontier with Central Asia. “We’ve tried to report the case to the police’s economic investigation bureau, but they said it’s not under their jurisdiction. We also approached Bank of China, they also said they can’t do much,” he said.

散户投资者要求拿回自己的钱。一名抗议者说，他的母亲通过中国银行(BoC)在新疆老家的分支机构，投资了150万元人民币（约合24.2万美元)购买泛亚的产品。“我们试过向公安局的经济侦查科举报这起案件，但他们说这不归他们管辖。我们也向中行反应了情况，他们也称自己无能为力，”他说。

Online notices indicate the products were marketed through Bank of China branches in Aksu, Xinjiang, and in Hangzhou, a prosperous city in the Yangtze Delta. The products were also marketed through other banks, according to material from Fanya Metal Exchange’s website and former salespeople.

网上公告显示出，泛亚的产品通过中行位于新疆阿克苏地区以及长三角繁华之地杭州市的分支机构进行销售。根据泛亚网站的资料以及该交易所曾经的销售人员提供的信息，泛亚的产品还通过其他银行销售。

Chinese bank branches will sometimes handle deposits for unaffiliated financial products or allow them to be marketed on premises without officially endorsing them. Former salespeople for Fanya investment products described the banks as third-party custodians.

中国的银行网点有时会代理客户将存款投向与银行本身没有关联的金融产品，或者允许此类产品通过本行销售而不为它们正式背书。而曾经销售过泛亚投资产品的人士将银行描述为第三方托管人。

That distinction is not always clear to retail investors. In some past cases when wealth management products gone awry, regulators have insisted that the bank accept some responsibility. Bank of China declined to comment.

散户投资者并非总是清楚其中的区别。在过去的一些案例中，理财产品出问题时，监管机构会认定银行要承担部分责任。中行拒绝对此进行置评。

The Fanya Metal Exchange’s use of normal banking channels to market its products could mean its troubles have broader systemic effects, if banks are held responsible by regulators.

泛亚使用正规的银行渠道销售其产品，这意味着其自身的麻烦会产生更广泛的系统性影响，如果监管机构认定银行应负责任的话。

“We can’t comment on Fanya because they are not under our jurisdiction,” the Yunnan securities regulator said on Tuesday. Asked about the redacted report, the regulator said it was “normal information release by us”.

“我们无法就泛亚发表评论，因为他们不在我们的管辖之下，”云南省证监局周二表示。当被问及那份被修改的报告时，该局称那是“我们正常的信息发布”。

In Kunming — until recently one of the fastest growing cities in south-west China — the combination of falling coal and minerals prices with a rising inventory of unsold properties is proving toxic.

昆明素来是中国西南地区发展最快的城市之一，但近期煤炭和矿产价格下跌以及待售房屋库存增加正在拖累当地经济。

The largest real estate company is on life-support and a number of smaller companies have failed, setting off a chain reaction of defaults on shadow loans, business owners said recently.

有企业家近来说，当地最大的房地产开发商正在垂死挣扎，而一些规模较小的开发商已经破产，引发了影子银行贷款违约的连锁反应。

The troubles at the Fanya Metal Exchange coincide with a broader slowdown in the Chinese economy and in commodity markets.

泛亚风波正发生在中国经济及大宗商品市场放缓的大背景之下。

Fanya fallout spreads to rare metal prices

泛亚事件的影响波及稀有金属价格

Liquidity problems at the Fanya Metal Exchange are pressuring international prices of some rare metals, with concerns that the exchange’s holding stocks of one metal, indium, may exceed four years of global demand.

泛亚的流动性问题正在对一些稀有金属的国际价格造成下行压力，市场担忧，泛亚的铟库存量可能超过了未来4年全球需求总和。

The exchange has built strategic stockpiles of indium, a metal used in smartphones and LCD screens, as well as other metals used in high-tech applications, while launching index products linked to the prices of those metals.

泛亚建立了铟（用于制造智能手机和液晶显示屏）及用于高科技产品的其他金属的战略储备，同时推出了与这些金属价格挂钩的指数产品。

“Whoever can get out first, will,” said Liu Yajuan, analyst with Asian Metal in Beijing, which recently published a report on the potential impact on indium of the Fanya Metal Exchange troubles. “Downstream processors are buying as little as possible in anticipation of a continuously falling market.”

北京咨询公司亚洲金属网(Asian Metal)的分析师刘亚娟（音译）说：“能先撤的就撤了。”该公司最近发布了一份关于泛亚遭遇的麻烦对铟潜在影响的报告。“由于预期铟的价格将持续下跌，下游加工商正在尽可能少地采购。”

The metal has strategic implications as a component in high-tech and military applications. Several years ago during a bout of anti-Japanese nationalism, Chinese industrial policymakers proposed the idea of building strategic stockpiles of indium, to counter the strategic stockpiles held by Japan since the early 1980s.

作为高科技和军事产品中的用料，铟具有战略意义。在几年前的反日民族主义浪潮中，中国工业政策制定者提出了建立铟战略储备的想法，以抗衡日本自上世纪80年代早期就开始建立的战略储备。

On Wednesday, the spot price of indium was Rmb1,760-Rmb1,860 per kilogramme — almost 50 per cent lower than the Rmb3,200-Rmb3,400/kg quoted in early March when Fanya stopped buying the metal, according to Asian Metal, a pricing and information service based in Beijing.

亚洲金属网的数据显示，周三，铟的现货价格为每公斤1760元至1860元人民币——几乎是今年3月初泛亚停止买入铟时每公斤3200元至3400元人民币报价的一半。