Local financing networks are unravelling across China as the economic slowdown bites into one of the weakest but most enduring links in the financial system — pulling hundreds of thousands of investors down with it.

随着经济增长放缓，中国各地的地方融资网络纷纷坍塌，导致数十万名投资者蒙受损失。地方融资网络是中国金融体系中最为脆弱、但也最为持久的环节之一。

These networks flourished as long as sentiment was high and rapid economic growth persisted. Now, however, investors are taking to the streets across the country as they seek to recoup their losses. Money ploughed into financing schemes that went bust in 2014 amounted to more than Rmb100bn ($16bn).

只要投资者情绪保持乐观，只要经济持续快速增长，这些网络就会蓬勃发展。然而，现在各地投资者纷纷走上街头，寻求挽回自己的损失。2014年出现兑付危机的融资项目的资金总数超过1000亿元人民币（合160亿美元）。

Grassroots financing schemes operate in a similar manner to direct sales, with investors drawn in by the promise of high returns rather than, say, profits from selling cosmetics. Some are outright Ponzi schemes, while in others funds are funnelled into high-interest loans in the shadow banking sector or other unregulated investment projects.

民间融资项目以类似于直销的方式运营，投资者被高额回报——而非（举例而言）销售化妆品——的利润）所吸引。一些项目纯粹是庞氏骗局，而在另一些项目里，资金被输送至影子银行部门的高息贷款或其他不受监管的投资项目。

Investors come from every rank in Chinese society. On Monday hundreds of well-heeled urban professionals who had purchased high-interest rate products from the Fanya Metal Exchange united with distribution agents who sold them in an unusual protest — which continued on Tuesday — in the financial heart of Beijing. Meanwhile in the neighbouring province of Hebei, farmers are trying to retrieve their life savings invested with a rural businessman who promised high returns from better-quality wheat.

投资者来自中国社会的各个阶层。本周一，数百名衣着考究的城市专业人士在北京金融街举行了不寻常的抗议，这些人购买了泛亚有色金属交易所(Fanya Metal Exchange)的高息产品，销售这些产品的代理商也加入了抗议者的行列。周二抗议仍在持续。与此同时，在环绕北京的河北省，农民们正试图拿回他们的毕生积蓄，此前他们相信一位农村商人对品质较高的小麦带来高回报的承诺，纷纷入股该项目。

Such “illegal fundraising” is spreading from the wealthier east coast to central and western regions, according to data from the China Banking Regulatory Commission. FT research shows every province in China recorded at least one financing scheme collapse in the past 18 months.

中国银监会(CBRC)的数据显示，此类“非法集资”正从较富裕的东部沿海地区蔓延至中西部地区。英国《金融时报》的研究表明，在过去18个月里，中国每个省份都出现了至少一起集资项目坍塌的情况。

“We are teetering at the tipsy-topsy edge of a crisis, so regulators need to be putting out fires here, fires there,” says Anne Stevenson-Yang, founding partner of investment researcher J Capital Research.

美奇金投资咨询公司(J Capital Research)的创始合伙人杨思安(Anne Stevenson-Yang)表示：“我们正徘徊在危机的悬崖边，监管机构需要到处灭火。”

The CBRC office that monitors illegal financing attributes the schemes’ proliferation to China’s economic slowdown and tighter credit along the financing chain. Cross-regional cases doubled in 2014 against the year before, while cases involving more than Rmb100m tripled and schemes involving more than 1,000 people quadrupled, it says.

负责监测非法集资活动的中国银监会办公室将此类案件层出不穷归因于中国经济增长放缓和融资链条上信贷趋紧。该办公室表示，2014年的跨省案例同比增长了1倍，同时涉案金额超亿元的案件增长了两倍，参与集资人数逾千的案件增长了3倍。

“Many factors that can lead to an increase in illegal fundraising will not change fundamentally in the short term. We estimate that currently and in the future illegal fundraising will still occur frequently,” a CBRC report stated in May. “And in some regions, industries or areas, they will emerge violently.”

中国银监会在今年5月发布的报告中表示：“导致非法集资活动上升的许多因素不会在短期内发生根本改变。我们估计，在当前及今后一段时期，非法集资活动仍会频繁发生。在一些地区、行业和领域甚至还可能表现得比较激烈。”

One of the largest cases reviewed by the FT involved an estimated Rmb8bn raised from 135,000 wheat farmers in three townships near the city of Xingtai, Hebei province.

英国《金融时报》研究的最大案件之一是河北邢台附近3县的13.5万名种植小麦的农民集资约80亿元人民币。

The wheat farmers invested at least Rmb10,000 each — more than the region’s average annual household income — to buy into a “rural co-operative”. Members received discounts on fertiliser, rice and oils, subsidies for college students and the handicapped, and a gift of 100 packets of flour upon joining. The scheme’s collapse has devastated local families.

这些种植小麦的农民每个人至少投资了1万元人民币——超过该地区家庭平均年收入——用于入股一家“农村合作社”。该合作社的成员在购买化肥、大米和油料时享受折扣，大学生和残疾人得到补贴，入股时还能拿到100斤面粉作为礼品。该骗局的崩塌摧毁了当地很多家庭。

“There are people who left their children and wives to avoid creditors, and I even heard that one peasant committed suicide because he owes tens of million of renminbi,” says Hao Xiaochun, a 61-year-old farmer who borrowed Rmb200,000 to invest in the co-operative that he cannot pay back.

“有人为躲避债主而离开了老婆孩子，我甚至听说有个农民因为欠了数千万元人民币而自杀了，”61岁的农民郝小春（音译）称。他借了20万人民币投资这个合作社，如今无力偿还。

Pyramid schemes, multi-layered sales networks known as chuanxiao and other too-good-to-be-true investments have flourished for years in China, especially in rust belt regions such as the north-east. Chinese authorities ban direct sales and dole out harsh punishments to the organisers of failed schemes to ward off the kind of pyramid scheme collapses that convulsed Russia and Albania in the 1990s.

多年来，金字塔骗局、被称为“传销”的多层级销售网、以及其他好得不真实的投资产品在中国层出不穷，特别是在东北这样的“铁锈地带”（指那些重工业曾十分发达的老工业基地——译者注）。中国当局禁止直销，并对失败项目的组织者施以严厉惩罚，以求避免出现上世纪90年代震动俄罗斯和阿尔巴尼亚的金字塔骗局崩塌风波。

The best-known pyramid scheme in China was a $385m ant-farming business that embroiled 1m rural investors in the north-east before it collapsed in late 2007. Its founder was sentenced to death.

中国最著名的金字塔骗局涉及一家3.85亿美元的蚂蚁养殖企业。蚁力神在2007年末倒闭前卷入了东北100万农村投资者。其创始人被判刑。

Around that time, lending restrictions in some sectors, chief among them property development, caused the informal or “shadow” lending business to boom, with interest rates well above the state-set rates in banks. Trust products, wealth management products and completely unregulated lending pools could offer higher interest rates by arbitraging the difference.

差不多在那个时候，部分行业（其中主要是房地产开发业）存在贷款限制，这导致非正式或“影子”贷款业务迅速发展，其利率远远高于国家制定的银行贷款利率。信托产品、理财产品以及完全不受监管的贷款池，可以通过息差套利来提供更高的利率。

The posterchild for this new business was a young woman from Zhejiang province named Wu Ying, who was sentenced to death in 2009 on charges of illegally raising Rmb770m after a “cash flow problem” triggered her arrest. A coalition of businessmen and rights activists successfully campaigned to have her sentence commuted, citing the importance of private financiers to China’s private industry.

这一新业务的标志人物是浙江的年轻女士——吴英。在因“现金流问题”被捕后，她被控非法集资7.7亿元人民币，并在2009年被判处死刑。由商界人士和人权活动人士组成的一个联盟开展活动，以私人金融家对中国民营产业的重要性为由，成功帮她获得了减刑。

In the years since, the industry has proliferated. Several of the schemes that came to light in the past year were run by local government officials or their relatives, raising further worries about the ability of Chinese financial or judicial authorities to regulate shadow fundraising. In one case in the central city of Nanyang in Henan province, the founder was a policeman who killed himself after his scheme failed.

从那时开始，非法集资行业迅速蔓延。过去一年中曝光的部分骗局是由地方政府官员或是他们的亲属运作，这引起了人们对中国金融或司法机构监管影子融资能力的进一步担忧。在一起发生在河南省南阳市的案件中，骗局的制造者是一名警察，他在骗局崩塌后自杀了。