这可以说最坦诚无忌的竞争了：在宣告将于2020年挑战纽约的国际金融中心地位之后不久，上海市购置了“华尔街金融牛”的复制品，将它安放在外滩。
“外滩金融牛”和它的纽约“兄弟”出自同一位雕塑家之手，重量相当，只是颜色略红一些。
然而，一头数千磅的公牛，还远不足以使上海的梦想成真：中国市场的规模位列世界前茅，但也是全世界最不成熟、最不透明和最排外的市场。
上海恐怕很难在十年之内成为超级国际金融市场。尽管过去一年来，上海朝着这一目标迈进了几步，但仍不够。
监管部门在多年筹划和数次“发令枪”误响之后，于今年4月正式推出了股指期货（在未来某一日期，按照约定价值买卖某一种股指的合约），并启动股票保证金交易和卖空交易的试点项目。这些改革具有重要的里程碑意义，因为有了这些新的金融工具之后，投资者就既可以从市场上涨中获利，也可以从市场下跌中获利了。
汇丰晋信基金管理有限公司(HSBC Jintrust)的李选进(Steve Lee)表示，在建设国际金融中心方面，上海正“朝着正确的方向迈进”，“搭建合理的基础”。许多市场分析师也持同样的看法。
但是，中国仍对金融期货交易严加控制，要求投资者必须通过一项测试，每笔交易都须预先存放一笔为数可观的资金。因此，只有财力雄厚的投资者和机构，才能够参与金融期货交易。
中央政府也在严格控制卖空交易和保证金交易，只允许交易量缓慢上升，也只是缓慢地扩大批准规模，允许更多企业从事这些在它看来风险极高的操作。
中国当局也慢慢开始着手提高人民币的国际地位，但其近期目标似乎只是使人民币“更具兑换性”，而不是彻底放弃资本管制。在人民币不可自由兑换的情况下，上海如何能实现“外滩金融牛”所承载的雄心壮志呢？
《中国私有化：中国股市内幕》(Privatising China: Inside China’s Stock Markets)一书的作者侯伟(Fraser Howie)表示，尽管施行了上述改革，尽管预计未来一年还将出台更多改革，包括推出供海外公司交易的国际板，但中央政府仍只是“在边缘地带鼓捣”。他表示：“这些措施从表面上看是进步，但从本质上说，什么都没有改变。”
“合格境外机构投资者计划”（QFII，有控制地允许海外资金投资A股的渠道）已经推出七年，但总投资额度才300亿美元，不到总市值（3.5万亿-4万亿美元）的百分之一。
而且，过去一年来最重要的一项改革措施，并不适用于外国人：非大陆投资者被禁止从事股指期货交易。在他们看来，这是一个国际金融中心理应提供的金融工具，但他们却无权使用。
一些分析人士认为，“外滩金融牛”身上所承载的、希望上海成为国际领先市场的梦想，需要几十年时间才能实现，但上海成为一个地区性金融中心，也许远不需要那么久。高盛(Goldman Sachs)的一份报告估计，到2020年前，仅上海一地的日均股票和期货交易价值就有可能超过3500亿美元，远高于当前的470亿美元，占中国总流动性的75%以上，地区总流动性的53%。
届时中国所有市场的流动性，可能占到整个地区流动性的70%左右。
比起在纽约的强项上打败纽约，这或许才是切实可行的目标：要取得真正的国际金融中心地位，就必须取消资本管制，对法院及法律体系进行现代化改造，取消对信息流通的控制，而北京方面大概尚未为此做好准备——或者说，至少在未来十年里，尚未做好准备。
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001035827
Call it the sincerest form of rivalry: shortly after declaring Shanghai would challenge New York as a global financial centre by 2020, the city bought its own copy of the Charging Bull of Wall Street, and installed it on the Bund.
The “Bund Financial Bull” was created by the original sculptor and weighs the same as his New York sibling, but is a bit redder in colour.
But it will take more than a few thousand pounds of bull to make Shanghai’s dreams come true: China’s markets are among the largest in the world, but are also among the most immature, opaque and inaccessible to foreign investors.
It is hard to see Shanghai becoming a global financial markets superpower in less than a decade – though the past year has seen several steps towards that goal.
After years on the drawing-board and several false starts, regulators this April introduced stock index futures – agreements to buy or sell an index at a pre-set value on a future date – as well as launching a pilot programme to allow margin trading and short selling of equities. These reforms mark important milestones, since they provide tools that will help traders profit from falling as well as rising markets.
Shanghai is “moving in the right direction” and “putting the building blocks in place” to build a global financial centre, says Steve Lee of HSBC Jintrust in Shanghai, echoing the sentiments of many market analysts.
But Beijing has kept a tight grip on financial futures trading, requiring investors to pass an exam and deposit a significant chunk of funds against every trade, so that only wealthy investors and institutions can be involved.
And Beijing has also kept a tight rein on short selling and margin trading, only slowly increasing the trading volumes and number of companies allowed to engage in what it sees as very risky practices.
The authorities have also slowly begun to increase the international role of the renminbi but their near-term goal appears to be to make the currency “more convertible”, not to abandon capital controls altogether. Without a freely convertible renminbi, it is hard to see how Shanghai can ever live up to the ambitions embodied in the Bund Bull.
Despite these reforms – and more are expected within the next year, including the launch of an international board to trade overseas companies – Beijing is just “tampering at the edges” says Fraser Howie, author of Privatising China: Inside China’s Stock Markets. “These steps give the appearance of progress, but fundamentally, nothing has changed.”
Seven years after Beijing introduced its Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) programme to give foreign money controlled access to the A share market – which lists companies incorporated on the mainland – foreign participation is capped at $30bn, less than 1 per cent of total market capitalisation of $3,500bn to $4,000bn.
And the most important reform of the past year does not apply to foreigners: non-mainland investors are barred from trading index futures, depriving them of access to the kind of tool they would expect from a global financial centre.
Some analysts think it will be decades before the Bund Bull fulfils his promise of making Shanghai a global leader, but it could become a regional force long before then. A report from Goldman Sachs that estimates the traded value of equities and futures in Shanghai alone could exceed $350bn a day by 2020, up from $47bn now, representing more than 75 per cent of Chinese liquidity and as much as 53 per cent of regional liquidity.
Chinese markets could provide 70 per cent of regional liquidity.
That may prove a more realistic ambition than beating New York at its own game: achieving true global status will mean lifting capital controls, modernising the courts, the legal system, and lifting controls on information in ways that Beijing may not yet be ready for – or at least, not within a decade.
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