美专家:中国房市泡沫远超迪拜

SHANGHAI — James S. Chanos built one of the largest fortunes on Wall Street by foreseeing the collapse of Enron and other highflying companies whose stories were too good to be true. Now Mr. Chanos, a wealthy hedge fund investor, is working to bust the myth of the biggest conglomerate of all: China Inc.

上海──成功预测Enron和其他迅速发展的公司的倒闭，使James S. Chanos本人成为华尔街最大的财富之一，他的故事好得让人难以置信。现在，Chanos，一个富有的对冲基金的投资者，正在努力破灭一个最大的企业的神话──中国公司。

As most of the world bets on China to help lift the global economy out of recession, Mr. Chanos is warning that China’s hyperstimulated economy is headed for a crash, rather than the sustained boom that most economists predict. Its surging real estate sector, buoyed by a flood of speculative capital, looks like “Dubai times 1,000 — or worse,” he frets. He even suspects that Beijing is cooking its books, faking, among other things, its eye-popping growth rates of more than 8 percent.

当世界上大多数人笃定中国能够帮助全球摆脱经济衰退的时候，Chanos警告说，中国过度刺激的经济正走向崩溃，而不像大多数经济学家预测的那样，会持续繁荣。迅猛增长的房地产业，由大量涌入的投机资本支持，“中国地产泡沫比迪拜严重1000倍以上”，他说。他甚至怀疑，北京的房价就是虚假的，因为它的增 长速度超过8%，这让人大跌眼镜。

“Bubbles are best identified by credit excesses, not valuation excesses,” he said in a recent appearance on CNBC. “And there’s no bigger credit excess than in China.” He is planning a speech later this month at the University of Oxford to drive home his point.
“比起对资产价值的高估，信贷的过剩供应才是泡沫的主因”，他在最近出现在CNBC（电视频道）时说道，“中国的信贷过剩无人能及。”在本月末，他准备在牛津大学演讲以宣扬他的观点。

As America’s pre-eminent short-seller — he bets big money that companies’ strategies will fail — Mr. Chanos’s narrative runs counter to the prevailing wisdom on China. Most economists and governments expect Chinese growth momentum to continue this year, buoyed by what remains of a $586 billion government stimulus program that began last year, meant to lift exports and consumption among Chinese consumers.

作为美国最大的卖空型的投资者，Chanos在中国投入巨资的公司策略将会失败──他的策略违背了现行的中国的政策。由去年开始的5860亿美元的政府刺激计划的支撑，多数经济学家和政府期望中国的增长势头今年能够持续，该计划目的在于弥补由于出口不振和国内消费的萧条带来的后果。

Still, betting against China will not be easy. Because foreigners are restricted from investing in stocks listed inside China, Mr. Chanos has said he is searching for other ways to make his bets, including focusing on construction- and infrastructure-related companies that sell cement, coal, steel and iron ore.

但是，对中国投注并不容易的。因为外国只能在中国限定的商店投资，Chanos说他将需找别的投资方式，包括水泥，煤炭，钢铁和铁矿石等这些跟建设和基础设施有关的公司。

James Chanos made his hedge fund fortune predicting problems at companies and shorting their stock.

Mr. Chanos, 51, whose hedge fund, Kynikos Associates, based in New York, has $6 billion under management, is hardly the only skeptic on China. But he is certainly the most prominent and vocal. For all his record of prescience — in addition to predicting Enron’s demise, he also spotted the looming problems of Tyco International, the Boston Market restaurant chain and, more recently, home builders and some of the world’s biggest banks — his detractors say that he knows little or nothing about China or its economy and that his bearish calls should be ignored.

51岁Chanos，他的对冲基金公司Kynikos Associates的总部设在纽约，帐下有60亿美元，它几乎是唯一的一家对中国持怀疑态度的公司。但是无疑是它的声音是最响亮的。 在他所有的预测里面-除了预测了Enron公司的死亡之外，他还指出泰科国际有限公司(Tyco International),波士顿连锁餐馆的虚假繁荣，以及最近的住房建筑商和一些世界顶级的银行的同样问题─他的反对者说他几乎不懂中国和中国的经济，他粗暴的演说应该不予理睬。

“I find it interesting that people who couldn’t spell China 10 years ago are now experts on China,” said Jim Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros and now lives in Singapore. “China is not in a bubble.” Colleagues acknowledge that Mr. Chanos began studying China’s economy in earnest only last summer and sent out e-mail messages seeking expert opinion. But he is tagging along with the bears, who see mounting evidence that China’s stimulus package and aggressive bank lending are creating artificial demand, raising the risk of a wave of nonperforming loans.

Jim Rogers,曾与Georoge Soros公司共同投资创建量子基金，现在居住在新加坡。“有些10年前还不能拼出China的单词的人，现在确是中国问题专家，我觉得这种现象很有趣，”他说，“中国没有在经济泡沫中。”同事认为Chanos从去年夏天才开始认真学习中国经济，并且发送e-mail咨询专家的意见。但是他跟随某些人，认为中国的政府刺激计划和积极的银行信贷是制造人为的需求，增加了不良信贷急剧增多的风险。

“In China, he seems to see the excesses, to the third and fourth power, that he’s been tilting against all these decades,” said Jim Grant, a longtime friend and the editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, who is also bearish on China. “He homes in on the excesses of the markets and profits from them. That’s been his stock and trade.”

“在中国，他仿佛看到了过剩，看到了第三和第四种权力，在这几十年里他一直向这方面倾斜”，Jim Grant说，他是一个Grant利率观察者，也不看好中国的经济。“他就生活在这些市场的过剩中来谋求利润。这就是他的股票和贸易。”

Mr. Chanos declined to be interviewed, citing his continuing research on China. But he has already been spreading the view that the China miracle is blinding investors to the risk that the country is producing far too much.“The Chinese,” he warned in an interview in November with Politico.com, “are in danger of producing huge quantities of goods and products that they will be unable to sell.”

Chanos拒绝接受采访，理由是她将继续研究中国。但是他已经衍生出这样的观点，中国的奇迹使投资者无视已经深深存在的投资风险。他在11月与Politico.com采访时警告说：“中国处于生产大量商品的危险中，因为他们将无法出售。”

In December, he appeared on CNBC to discuss how he had already begun taking short positions, hoping to profit from a China collapse. In recent months, a growing number of analysts, and some Chinese officials, have also warned that asset bubbles might emerge in China. The nation’s huge stimulus program and record bank lending, estimated to have doubled last year from 2008, pumped billions of dollars into the economy, reigniting growth.

去年12月，他出现在CNBC，讨论他如何已经开始采取空仓，希望从中国崩溃中获利。近几个月来，越来越多的分析师和中国官员也开始警告说，在中国可能会出现资产泡沫。从2008年开始，去年政府的巨额经济刺激计划和银行贷款的记录，估计增加了一倍，数十亿美元注入到经济，重燃增长。

But many analysts now say that money, along with huge foreign inflows of “speculative capital,” has been funneled into the stock and real estate markets. A result, they say, has been soaring prices and a resumption of the building boom that was under way in early 2008 — one that Mr. Chanos and others have called wasteful and overdone.

但许多分析家说，随着大量外资流入的“投机资本”，钱已进入股票和房地产市场漏斗。结果，他们说，就是价格已经飙升,以及2008年初的建设热潮正在进行恢复是，这就是Chanos和其他人所说的浪费和过度建设。

“It’s going to be a bust,” said Gordon G. Chang, whose book, “The Coming Collapse of China” (Random House), warned in 2001 of such a crash.

“这将是一个泡沫，”在2001年,Gordon G. Chang在他的书《中国即将崩溃》（兰登书屋）中说道。

Friends and colleagues say Mr. Chanos is comfortable betting against the crowd — even if that crowd includes the likes of Warren E. Buffett and Wilbur L. Ross Jr., two other towering figures of the investment world.
A contrarian by nature, Mr. Chanos researches companies, pores over public filings to sift out clues to fraud and deceptive accounting, and then decides whether a stock is overvalued and ready for a fall. He has a staff of 26 in the firm’s offices in New York and London, searching for other China-related information.

朋友和同事说，Chanos最喜欢的就是与多数人唱反调，甚至多数人中包括其他伟大的投资者，就像Warren E.Buffett和Wilbur L. Ross Jr.一个天生的背道而驰者，Chanos研究公司，在公共文件中筛选出细微的线索，统计出存在欺诈和可能存在欺诈的地方，然后决定股票是否被高估和准备下跌。他的在伦敦和纽约的公司办公室，总共有26名雇员在寻找其他跟中国有关的信息。

“His record is impressive,” said Byron R. Wien, vice chairman of Blackstone Advisory Services. “He’s no fly-by-night charlatan. And I’m bullish on China.”

“他的记录令人印象深刻，”Byron R. Wien说，“他是个见不得光的骗子。我看好中国。”