The global economy is full of risks right now.

目前，全球经济充满风险。

Growth is sluggish, and central banks seem powerless to fix it.

增长缓慢，中央银行似乎也无能为力。

Europe faces persistent challenges and division.

欧洲面临持续存在的挑战和分裂。

In America, the election looms.

美国大选在即。

But some say the biggest danger of all may be on the other side of the world, in China.

不过，有些人说，最大的危险可能在世界的另一边——中国。

China is in the midst of one of the biggest borrowing binges in recent history.

中国正处于近年历史上最大的借贷狂潮之中。

Its debt load reached $26.6 trillion in 2015 — about five times what it was a decade ago, and more than two and a half times the size of the country’s entire economy.

2015年，它的债务总额达到26.6万亿美元，大约是10年前的五倍，是该国经济总量的2.5倍多。

That huge increase has prompted some economists and even the prominent investor George Soros to compare China to the United States before the 2008 financial crisis.

这种巨大增长促使一些经济学家、甚至著名的投资者乔治•索罗斯(George Soros)把中国与2008年金融危机前的美国相比较。

How big a danger does China’s fast-growing debt load present to the country, or the world?

中国快速增长的债务让该国或世界面临多大的危险？

The traditional view is that rapidly rising debt eventually leads to an economic crisis.

传统观点是快速增长的债务最终会导致经济危机。

That can happen in several ways.

它可能以几种方式发生。

In Greece, the culprit was the government, which built up more debt than it could handle.

在希腊，罪魁祸首是政府，它累积了超过自己承受能力的债务。

In the United States, the risks lurked in the finances of banks and households.

在美国，风险潜伏在银行和家庭财务方面。

In the case of China, the problem is primarily in the corporate sector.

在中国，这个问题主要存在于公司方面。

China’s big companies — especially those owned by the state — have done much of the borrowing.

中国最大的企业——尤其是那些国有企业——是借入的主体。

Higher debt means companies will have to spend more on interest and paying it back, and less on investing and hiring.

更高的债务意味着公司将不得不在支付利息和偿还方面投入更多，在投资和雇佣方面投入更少。

That is where a vicious cycle could come in.

这就可能导致恶性循环。

Less spending on investing and hiring hurts the overall economy, hitting corporate bottom lines and making it even harder for companies to pay off debt.

减少投资和雇佣方面的开支，会打击整体经济，损害企业的盈利，让还债变得愈发艰难。

Bad loans rise.

不良贷款会上升。

Banks freeze lending.

银行放贷会被冻结。

Confidence in the financial system can be shaken, leading to a full-fledged banking crisis.

金融体系的信心会受到动摇，从而引发全面的银行业危机。

China, which has the world’s second-largest economy after the United States’, plays a crucial role in generating global growth.

中国是仅次于美国的世界第二大经济体，在促进全球经济增长方面发挥着重要作用。

Such a situation in China could ripple across the world.

中国如果出现这种局面，其影响可能扩散到世界各地。

On the other hand, a number of economists say China’s mountain of debt is not as scary as it appears.

另一方面，许多经济学家认为，中国堆积如山的债务并不像表面看起来那样可怕。

Qu Hongbin, chief economist for Greater China at HSBC, and his team argue that China’s debt is simply a result of the way its financial system works.

汇丰银行(HSBC)大中华区首席经济学家曲宏斌及其团队表示，中国的债务仅仅是该国金融系统的运营方式所带来的后果。

For a variety of reasons, China’s corporations and households stash more money away than their peers in other countries.

由于种种原因，中国企业和家庭储蓄的资金比其他国家的企业和家庭多得多。

That cash piles up in banks and is turned into loans, resulting in China’s high level of debt.

这些资金汇聚在银行里，又变身为贷款，导致中国的债务水平居高不下。

Since the debt is backed by all that savings, it is not as risky, Mr Qu contends.

曲宏斌说，这些债务有储蓄做支撑，因此风险没有那么大。

Concerns about China’s debt levels reaching a critical threshold and posing a systemic risk are overblown, the HSBC team wrote in April.

有关中国的债务水平已达临界值，可能引发系统性风险的担忧被夸大了，其团队在4月份写道。

Others argue that China’s debt is less of a threat because it is to a great degree backed by the government.

其他一些人声称，中国的债务在很大程度上得到了政府的背书，因此不会构成太大威胁。

Much of it comes from state-run banks, which are the primary lenders to China’s large state-run companies.

许多贷款都源自国有银行，它们是中国大型国企的主要债权人。

That means Beijing can stop banks from pushing borrowers too hard and would be more inclined to shore up the financial system, preventing the crisis that a more free-market economy might suffer.

这意味着北京可以阻止银行把借款人逼得太狠，而且很有可能为金融体系提供支撑，以防发生自由程度更高的市场经济体可能遭遇的危机。

The debt, too, is largely domestic, making China less likely to be pushed into a crisis by problems outside its borders, which have toppled debt-heavy emerging economies in the past.

而且这些债务基本是内债，使得中国不太可能因为受境外问题的钳制而陷入危机。此前，类似的问题曾把某些债务负担沉重的新兴经济体拖垮。

Other economies, furthermore, have debt similar to or even bigger than China’s.

此外，其他一些经济体的债务水平与中国类似，甚至还要更高。

Debt in the United States, for instance, is roughly equivalent when compared with the size of America’s economy.

例如，美国的债务占其经济总量的比重，与中国大体相当。

Japan’s is much larger, at nearly four times the size of its national output.

日本的数字则高得多，债务总额几乎是经济总量的四倍。

Still, there is ample evidence to suggest that a large expansion of debt almost always has disastrous consequences.

不过，有充分的证据表明，债务规模急剧扩张几乎总是会带来灾难性的后果。

Neil Shearing, chief emerging markets economist at the research firm Capital Economics, has studied more than 25 years of collapses in developing economies.

经济研究公司凯投宏观(Capital Economics)的首席新兴市场经济学家尼尔•希林(Neil Shearing)对发展中国家的经济崩溃有着超过25年的研究。

He concludes that the pace of debt accumulation is more important than the overall level of debt in determining whether a country will face a financial crisis.

他得出的结论是，与总体债务规模相比，债务增速是决定一个国家会不会发生金融危机的更重要因素。

China’s pace of debt accumulation is well above the threshold he identified as indicating the potential for crisis.

而中国的债务增速，比他眼中预示着可能发生危机的阈值高出不少。

Some economists say that even if China dodges a full-scale crisis, it may not be able to escape the damage caused by its rising debt.

一些经济学家称，中国即便逃过一场全面危机，也有可能无法逃脱不断攀升的债务造成的危害。

They fear that China could fall into a yearslong slump like Japan, which has regularly suffered little or even no growth ever since its own banking crisis more than two decades ago.

他们担心中国或许会像日本那样陷入为期多年的衰退。自从日本在20多年前爆发银行业危机以来，其经济增长常常微乎其微，甚至出现过零增长。

In China’s case, the problems created by such an outcome would be much more painful, since it would enter that slow-growth period with its people at a much lower standard of living.

就中国而言，类似的结果可能引发惨烈得多的问题，因为它会在人民生活水平相对低很多的时候进入经济增长放缓的阶段。

There are already signs that China’s debt is beginning to hamper progress in its economy.

有迹象表明，中国的债务已经开始妨碍其经济进步了。

China’s banks have increased their lending to try to stimulate the economy, but the actual rate of growth has not picked up.

中国银行加大了放贷力度，竭力刺激经济，但实际增长率并未加速。

That is partly because China’s economy requires more and more debt to produce the same economic results.

这在某种程度上是因为中国经济得用越来越多的债务为其带来同等的经济成效。

Brandon Emmerich, general manager for North America at Wind Information, a data provider, says $4 of new credit is necessary to generate just $1 of additional gross domestic product — the worst ratio since the depths of the last financial crisis.

数据供应商万得资讯(Wind Information)北美部总经理布兰登•埃默里赫(Brandon Emmerich)说，信贷每新增4美元，只能让国内生产总值新增1美元，这是上一次金融危机爆发以来最糟糕的比率。

One reason, Mr Emmerich recently wrote in a newsletter, is that most new debt in China goes to pay off old obligations rather than invest in new value-creating projects.

埃默里赫在一篇简报里写道，一个原因是，中国的大部分新增债务，都被用于偿还旧债，而非投资于可以创造价值的新项目。

After analyzing corporate bonds issued in China, he calculated that 42 percent of the money raised since 2015 was earmarked to pay off existing loans or expiring bonds, compared with only 8 percent in 2014.

分析过在中国发行的企业债券之后，他得出结论，自2015年以来募集到的资金，有42%被用来偿还现有债务或赎回到期债券。相比之下，2014年的数字是8%。

In an August report, the International Monetary Fund warned of heightened downside risks and the need for decisive action to reduce the economy’s reliance on credit, including reforming and even shutting down overly indebted companies.

国际货币基金组织(International Monetary Fund)在8月的一份报告中就下行风险提升做出警告，称有必要采取果断的行动，降低经济对信贷的依赖，包括改组甚至关停负债过高的公司。

Vulnerabilities are still rising on a dangerous trajectory, it said.

脆弱度仍在沿着危险的轨道上升，报告称。

China has long defied predictions that it is heading for a crash, and perhaps it will prove the doomsayers wrong yet again.

关于中国经济即将崩溃的预测过去一直存在，但都落了空。中国也许会再度证明这些悲观主义者是错的。

But Beijing’s policy makers must limit the increase in debt without inflicting a severe blow to growth.

但北京的政策制定者必须限制债务规模的扩张，同时还要避免对经济增长造成严重打击。

That delicate balancing act is hard to manage, but Beijing may be left with no other choice.

这种微妙的平衡很难把握，但北京或许已经没有其他选择。