最
近，随着中国当地企业家纷纷寻找融资帮助，戴卫东的镀金手机一直响个不停。不过，正如对手机的选择所表现出来的，戴卫东并不是一个传统的银行家。他是在中国国有银行体系的缝隙中如雨后春笋般涌现并迅速增长的一个行业中的一员：他是民间担保人，这类人为中小企业做担保，帮助他们获得银行贷款。此外，他们还直接向信贷紧张的企业提供贷款或进行投资。
担保人已日益成为受到信贷紧缩、工资大幅上涨和其他生产成本激增挤压的小制造商的最后能够求助的贷款人。这类民间运作者利用从房地产开发商、煤矿矿主或其他拥有大量资金的个人筹集的资金，力图填补国有银行留下的融资空白。很多人说国有银行停止了向小企业提供贷款。作为交换条件，除高额利息外，他们还向客户收取一定的费用。
据官方数据显示，截至6月底，3,366家专门从事小额贷款的非银行机构共安排了约人民币2,875亿元（合450亿美元）贷款。相比之下，去年同期，1,940家此类机构共发放了人民币1,249亿元贷款。业内专家说，实际的数额还要更大，因为官方统计数据中并没有反映出全部的民间放贷活动。
不过，批评人士说，这类公司监管不严格，很多传统银行拒绝与他们打交道。
目前，中国已经形成很多人所称的"双轨经济"，国有行业资金充裕而私营领域融资紧张。私营领域的困难可能对中国的增长带来影响：根据某些估计数据，中国有约4,000万家私营企业，占了中国就业岗位的80%，经济产值的一半以上。
多年来，中国领导层一直寻求鼓励私营企业，作为一种增加就业岗位、提高国内居民收入的途径。上世纪70年代末提出改革开放的已故领导人邓小平的名言之一是：致富光荣。
但正当民营领域取得扩张之时，大型国有控股企业依然是中国决策者关注的重点，尤其是在危机时期。2008年底世纪经济开始动摇之时，中国的回应是注入约5,860亿美元的信贷，以保持经济以每年接近10%的速度增长。不过大部分资金都用在了铁路和其他国有项目上。
以中国工商银行和中国建设银行为首的四大银行在今年上半年都公布盈利突破纪录，一个原因是这些银行更注重信用卡和财富管理产品等带来费用收入的业务。
虽然部分大型银行公布小企业借贷量增多，但许多民营企业特别是小型制造商说整体信贷依然紧缩并且昂贵，因为中央政府从去年开始收紧银行借贷以抑制由大规模投资刺激引发的通货膨胀。
目前的情况是，融资问题已经导致沿海省份广东和浙江的一些小型制造商陷入破产。这两个省是中国民营经济的中心。
戴卫东这样的信贷担保人通常与银行合作，承担银行向小企业贷款的风险，从中赚取服务费。每年的服务费占贷款金额的1%到10%不等。温州等地这类贷款的利率已经飙升至高达15%，相当于基准贷款利率的两倍。
2007年，戴卫东放弃了自己经营多年的一家制造企业，转而投身信贷担保领域。鉴于目前小型制造商面临的融资困境，他开玩笑说自己转行是"有先见之明"。他的公司名为金茂信用担保有限公司，在温州的注册资本为3,020万元，大多都是自己的资金。
戴卫东称自己是小企业和银行之间的"桥梁"。他的收费标准是每笔担保的贷款收取客户0.1%的月费或1%的年费。为控制风险，他只为愿意将自己的硬资产作为贷款抵押品的公司作担保。
戴卫东说，金茂融资担保在过去四年里从未有逾期未还的贷款。不过他说，尽管有担保和抵押物，很多银行仍然不愿向小企业发放贷款。
戴卫东说，我想做大，但银行没有钱。他这里指的是中国商业银行存款准备金被大幅提高，也就是说，每吸收100元的存款，银行只能贷出78.5元。
相应地，私人资金潜在的高额回报让信贷担保公司成了中国充裕现金流青睐的投资对象。因为这些公司不是存款机构，所以它们无需受到和银行类似的严格监管。
中银富登村镇银行(简称：中银富登)地区销售经理张翼说，监管很松，为欺诈敞开了大门，同时资金也流向了政府试图严格控制的房地产等行业。中银富登是中国银行与新加坡主权财富基金淡马锡控股公司(Temasek Holdings)旗下子公司成立的合资企业。
中银富登计划未来五年在中国开设多达400家农村银行，从中可以看出外国投资者对为中国小企业提供融资的兴趣日渐浓厚。
尽管如此，据官方和业内人士的估计，仅温州一地的担保公司数量这几个月就猛增至200多家。温州人曾被认为助长了房地产繁荣期时的房价。
中国中小企业协会副会长、生活在温州的周德文说，温州人不再选择房地产作为投资品，他们现在选的是信贷担保。
Lingling Wei
（更新完成）
（本文版权归道琼斯公司所有，未经许可不得翻译或转载。）
Dai Weidong's gold-plated cell phone has been ringing off the hook lately with local entrepreneurs looking for financing help.
But Mr. Dai, as his choice of phone suggests, is not a conventional banker. He is a member of a fast-growing sector that has sprung up through the cracks in China's state banking system: private guarantors who offer to help small-and-medium-sized enterprises get bank loans by pledging to repay the loans if borrowers default. They also lend directly to credit-starved businesses, or invest in them.
Guarantors have become the lenders of last resort to small manufacturers who increasingly are getting squeezed by tight credit as well as soaring wages and other production costs. These private operators, using money raised from property developers, coal miners or other cash-rich individuals, aim to fill the funding void left by state banks that many say have all but stopped lending to small businesses. In return, they charge their clients a fee on top of high interest rates imposed on the loans.
As of the end of June, about 287.5 billion yuan ($45 billion) of loans were arranged by 3,366 nonbank institutions specializing in small letters of credit, according to official data. By comparison, 124.9 billion yuan of loans were issued by 1,940 such firms a year earlier. Industry experts say the actual figures are much larger, because not all of the private lending is reflected in the official statistics.
But these firms are lightly regulated, critics say, and many traditional banks refuse to do business with them.
China today has become what many call a two-track economy, with a state-owned sector flooded with cash and a private one starved of funding. The woes of the private sector could have an impact on Chinese growth: By some estimates, it includes some 40 million companies and accounts for 80% of the country's jobs and more than half of economic output.
For years, the Chinese leadership has sought to encourage private entrepreneurship as a way to boost employment and domestic income. Deng Xiaoping, the late leader who started China's economic reform in the late 1970s, famously declared: 'Getting rich is glorious.'
But even as the private sector has expanded, large state-controlled enterprises have remained the focus of Chinese policy makers, especially in times of crisis. At the end of 2008, when the world economy started to wobble, Beijing responded by pumping in some $586 billion of credit to keep its economy humming at a rate close to 10% a year. Most of that money, though, has gone to railways and other state-run projects.
China's big banks, led by Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp., posted record profits in the first half of this year, buoyed in part by a greater focus on business that generates fee income, such as credit cards and wealth-management products.
While some of the large banks reported bigger small-business lending volumes, many private companies -- particularly small manufacturers -- say credit overall has remained tight and expensive since the central government started tightening bank lending last year to contain inflation spurred by the massive investment stimulus.
Already, funding problems have pushed into bankruptcy a few small manufacturers in coastal provinces Guangdong and Zhejiang, the traditional hubs for China's private economy.
Credit guarantors like Mr. Dai often work in conjunction with banks by taking on the risk of a loan from a bank to a small business in exchange for a fee -- anywhere from 1% to 10% annually of the loan amount. Interest rates on these loans in places like Wenzhou have surged to as high as 15%, or twice the benchmark lending rate.
In 2007, Mr. Dai gave up a manufacturing business he had run for years and switched to credit guarantee, a change of course he jokingly calls 'prescient' in light of the funding plight facing small manufacturers now. His firm, Jinmao Guarantee Co. Ltd., was registered with the Wenzhou government with 30.2 million yuan ($4.7 million) in capital, mostly his own.
Describing himself as a 'bridge' between small businesses and banks, Mr. Dai charges his clients a 0.1% monthly fee, or 1% a year, for every loan guaranteed by his firm. To control risk, he only provides guarantees for companies willing to put up their hard assets as collateral for the loans.
Jinmao Guarantee hasn't had any delinquent loans in the past four years, Mr. Dai says. However, even with the guarantee and the collateral, he says, many banks are still unwilling to lend to small businesses.
'I want to make it big, but banks have no money,' Mr. Dai says, referring to the sharply raised reserve requirements on Chinese banks that have limited their lending ability to only 78.5 yuan for every 100 yuan in deposit.
The potential high returns on private funding, in turn, have made the credit-guarantee business an attractive investment for the ample amount of cash floating around China. And because these firms are not deposit-taking institutions, they aren't subject to the same regulatory scrutiny as banks.
'Regulation is very weak, opening doors for fraud and the flow of capital into the very sectors the government is trying to rein in, like real estate,' says Zhang Yi, a regional sales manager at BOC Fullerton Village Bank, a joint venture between Bank of China Ltd. and a unit of Temasek Holdings, a Singaporean sovereign-wealth fund.
The venture, representing the growing interest among foreign investors in providing small-business financing in China, plans to open up to 400 rural banks in the next five years.
Still, in Wenzhou alone, where residents have been blamed for pushing up housing prices during the boom times, the number of guarantee companies has expanded dramatically in recent months, to over 200, according to official and industry estimates.
'The investment of choice for people in Wenzhou is no longer real estate,' says Zhou Dewen, deputy director of the China Association of Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises, who lives in Wenzhou. 'It is credit guarantee.'
Lingling Wei
But Mr. Dai, as his choice of phone suggests, is not a conventional banker. He is a member of a fast-growing sector that has sprung up through the cracks in China's state banking system: private guarantors who offer to help small-and-medium-sized enterprises get bank loans by pledging to repay the loans if borrowers default. They also lend directly to credit-starved businesses, or invest in them.
Guarantors have become the lenders of last resort to small manufacturers who increasingly are getting squeezed by tight credit as well as soaring wages and other production costs. These private operators, using money raised from property developers, coal miners or other cash-rich individuals, aim to fill the funding void left by state banks that many say have all but stopped lending to small businesses. In return, they charge their clients a fee on top of high interest rates imposed on the loans.
As of the end of June, about 287.5 billion yuan ($45 billion) of loans were arranged by 3,366 nonbank institutions specializing in small letters of credit, according to official data. By comparison, 124.9 billion yuan of loans were issued by 1,940 such firms a year earlier. Industry experts say the actual figures are much larger, because not all of the private lending is reflected in the official statistics.
But these firms are lightly regulated, critics say, and many traditional banks refuse to do business with them.
China today has become what many call a two-track economy, with a state-owned sector flooded with cash and a private one starved of funding. The woes of the private sector could have an impact on Chinese growth: By some estimates, it includes some 40 million companies and accounts for 80% of the country's jobs and more than half of economic output.
For years, the Chinese leadership has sought to encourage private entrepreneurship as a way to boost employment and domestic income. Deng Xiaoping, the late leader who started China's economic reform in the late 1970s, famously declared: 'Getting rich is glorious.'
But even as the private sector has expanded, large state-controlled enterprises have remained the focus of Chinese policy makers, especially in times of crisis. At the end of 2008, when the world economy started to wobble, Beijing responded by pumping in some $586 billion of credit to keep its economy humming at a rate close to 10% a year. Most of that money, though, has gone to railways and other state-run projects.
China's big banks, led by Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp., posted record profits in the first half of this year, buoyed in part by a greater focus on business that generates fee income, such as credit cards and wealth-management products.
While some of the large banks reported bigger small-business lending volumes, many private companies -- particularly small manufacturers -- say credit overall has remained tight and expensive since the central government started tightening bank lending last year to contain inflation spurred by the massive investment stimulus.
Already, funding problems have pushed into bankruptcy a few small manufacturers in coastal provinces Guangdong and Zhejiang, the traditional hubs for China's private economy.
Credit guarantors like Mr. Dai often work in conjunction with banks by taking on the risk of a loan from a bank to a small business in exchange for a fee -- anywhere from 1% to 10% annually of the loan amount. Interest rates on these loans in places like Wenzhou have surged to as high as 15%, or twice the benchmark lending rate.
In 2007, Mr. Dai gave up a manufacturing business he had run for years and switched to credit guarantee, a change of course he jokingly calls 'prescient' in light of the funding plight facing small manufacturers now. His firm, Jinmao Guarantee Co. Ltd., was registered with the Wenzhou government with 30.2 million yuan ($4.7 million) in capital, mostly his own.
Describing himself as a 'bridge' between small businesses and banks, Mr. Dai charges his clients a 0.1% monthly fee, or 1% a year, for every loan guaranteed by his firm. To control risk, he only provides guarantees for companies willing to put up their hard assets as collateral for the loans.
Jinmao Guarantee hasn't had any delinquent loans in the past four years, Mr. Dai says. However, even with the guarantee and the collateral, he says, many banks are still unwilling to lend to small businesses.
'I want to make it big, but banks have no money,' Mr. Dai says, referring to the sharply raised reserve requirements on Chinese banks that have limited their lending ability to only 78.5 yuan for every 100 yuan in deposit.
The potential high returns on private funding, in turn, have made the credit-guarantee business an attractive investment for the ample amount of cash floating around China. And because these firms are not deposit-taking institutions, they aren't subject to the same regulatory scrutiny as banks.
'Regulation is very weak, opening doors for fraud and the flow of capital into the very sectors the government is trying to rein in, like real estate,' says Zhang Yi, a regional sales manager at BOC Fullerton Village Bank, a joint venture between Bank of China Ltd. and a unit of Temasek Holdings, a Singaporean sovereign-wealth fund.
The venture, representing the growing interest among foreign investors in providing small-business financing in China, plans to open up to 400 rural banks in the next five years.
Still, in Wenzhou alone, where residents have been blamed for pushing up housing prices during the boom times, the number of guarantee companies has expanded dramatically in recent months, to over 200, according to official and industry estimates.
'The investment of choice for people in Wenzhou is no longer real estate,' says Zhou Dewen, deputy director of the China Association of Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises, who lives in Wenzhou. 'It is credit guarantee.'
Lingling Wei
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