在多数国家，地方政府银行贷款中有五分之一会违约的消息将令人震惊。但在中国，这样的新闻让人惊喜。
"近80%的项目至少有一些偿债能力，这个事实相当令人惊讶，"汇丰(HSBC)中国区首席经济学家屈宏斌表示。
分析师们表示，他们曾采用这样的假设，即中国地方政府总计7.7万亿元人民币（合1.1万亿美元）的银行贷款中，至少有30%不太可能得到偿还。这使20%的估计成为相对而言的好消息，即便这只是各银行自己提供的初步数据，中国银行业监管机构今年还将进行更为正式的评估。
地方政府的偿债能力面临如此阴暗的前景，反映了一个事实，即许多贷款投入了根本无望大举盈利的项目。
"在全球金融危机期间，中国的银行放贷被用来代替财政支出，以提振国内生产总值(GDP)增长和创造就业，"屈宏斌表示。"可能无法偿还的那20%地方政府贷款中，有许多很可能投入了纯粹的公共工程项目，如修建公园或公共厕所，或者植树。"
在其它国家背上巨额赤字为刺激方案埋单之际，北京方面让政府控制的银行体系先拿出资金，从而推迟了刺激措施的最终账单。即便是2008年11月宣布的大肆吹嘘的4万亿元人民币刺激方案，也仅包括1.2万亿元人民币的中央政府资金，其余资金来自地方政府和银行贷款。
一些分析师提出，如果北京方面的刺激资金有更多来自中央政府预算，那将更为透明，有助于减少浪费和腐败。"如果通过中央预算来运作更多投资，他们就不会像后来发生的那样，让商业银行家扮演政府政策代理人的角色，"渣打(Standard Chartered)中国研究部主管王志浩(Stephen Green)表示。
"但他们当时并不具有那种奢侈的选择，因为那是一个紧急情况，他们必须迅速行动，而他们没有现成的机制。"
过去10年间，中国各银行已从缺乏清偿能力的困境机构，转变为就市值和绝对利润额而言全球最有价值和最盈利的银行。这是通过政府注资、大量剥离不良贷款、改善风险管理、以及部分私有化（在香港和上海证交所上市）实现的。但北京方面仍持有各大银行的多数股权。因此，当2008年全球金融危机爆发时，政府实质上是下令银行重拾旧习惯，即向政府青睐的项目提供资金。
译者/和风
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001033793
In most countries, the revelation that local governments would default on a fifth of their bank loans would be greeted with alarm. In China, however, the news came as a pleasant surprise.
"The fact that nearly 80 per cent of those projects have at least some capacity to service their debt is quite amazing," said Qu Hongbin, chief China economist at HSBC.
Analysts said that their working assumption had been that a minimum of 30 per cent of the total Rmb7,700bn ($1,100bn, €875m, £732m) bank lending to Chinese local governments was unlikely to be repaid. That made the 20 per cent estimate relatively good news, even if it was only a preliminary figure provided by the banks themselves before a more formal assessment by the banking regulator this year.
Such a bleak outlook on local governments' ability to service debt reflected the fact that many loans were handed out to projects that were never meant to make large profits.
"During the global financial crisis, bank lending in China was used as a substitute for fiscal spending to boost GDP growth and create jobs," Mr Qu said. "For the 20 per cent of loans to local governments that might not be repaid, a lot of it was probably spent on pure public works projects such as building parks or public toilets or planting trees."
While other countries racked up huge deficits to pay for stimulus packages, Beijing was able to delay the final bill for its stimulus by getting the state-controlled banking system to put up the money first. Even the much-vaunted Rmb4,000bn stimulus package announced in November 2008 included only Rmb1,200bn of central government money, with the rest coming from local governments and bank loans.
Some analysts suggested that if more of Beijing's stimulus had come from the central government budget it would have been more transparent, with less waste and corruption. "If they had run more investment through the central budget they wouldn't have turned commercial bankers into agents of government policy in the way they did," said Stephen Green, head of greater China research at Standard Chartered.
"But they didn't really have that luxury because it was an emergency, they had to do it quickly and they didn't have the mechanisms in place."
Chinese banks have been transformed in the past decade from insolvent basket cases to the world's most valuable and profitable lenders, in terms of market capitalisation and absolute profits. That was achieved through state capital injections, huge carve-outs of bad loans, better risk management and partial privatisation through stock market listings in Hong Kong and Shanghai. But Beijing still owns majority shares in all the big banks. So when the crisis hit in 2008 it essentially ordered them to return to their old habits of handing money to favoured government projects.
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