中国央行开年降准，释放1.5万亿人民币

HONG KONG — With the Chinese economy beginning the new year on a decidedly downbeat note, Beijing’s leaders are injecting more than $200 billion into its financial system to ease lending.

香港——随着中国经济以明显悲观的基调开始新的一年，北京领导人向金融系统注入2000多亿美元来放宽信贷。

The People’s Bank of China on Friday said it would cut the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves by one percentage point. The move will essentially free up 1.5 trillion Chinese renminbi, or about $218 billion, for an economy experiencing weaker factory output and consumer confidence while it weathers a trade war with the United States.

中国人民银行上周五表示，将把银行存款准备金率下调1个百分点。此举将向中国经济释放1.5万亿元人民币(约合2180亿美元)，在经历与美国的贸易战之际，中国的工业产出和消费者信心正在减弱。

The cut is not unusual for China’s central bank, but it comes amid uncertainty about how Beijing will manage slower growth. China’s slowdown has contributed to shaky global financial markets. On Wednesday, underscoring the broad impact, Apple unexpectedly cut its sales forecast for its latest quarter, citing disappointing iPhone sales in China, once one of its most vibrant markets.

此次降准对中国央行来说并非不同寻常，但目前北京如何应对经济增长放缓仍存在不确定性。中国经济放缓已导致全球金融市场动荡。周三，苹果公司出人意料地下调了最新一个季度的销售预期，原因是iPhone在中国的销售令人失望，这凸显出中国的广泛影响。中国曾是苹果最活跃的市场之一。

Chinese officials pledged last month to step up support of the economy, and they are facing new urgency, said Mark Williams, chief Asia economist for Capital Economics, a research firm. Retail and auto sales are down, and China’s latest manufacturing data showed factory activity shrank in December. While monthly data released on Friday showed improvement in China’s services sector, the overall picture has become more concerning.

研究公司凯投宏观(Capital Economics)的首席亚洲经济学家马克·威廉姆斯(Mark Williams)表示，中国官员上月承诺将加大对经济的支持力度，他们正面临新的紧迫形势。零售和汽车销售下降，中国最新制造业数据显示，12月份工厂活动出现萎缩。尽管上周五发布的月度数据显示，中国的服务业有所改善，但整体形势变得更加令人担忧。

“The consistently downbeat tone of the data released since then will only have underlined the strains the economy is facing,” Mr. Williams said.

“从那以后发布的数据持续低迷，只会突显出经济面临的压力，”威廉姆斯说。

This month, China will report economic growth figures for the last three months of 2018. While China’s headline growth figure is widely seen as unreliable, it dipped in the third quarter to 6.5 percent, its lowest level of expansion since the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

本月，中国将公布2018年最后三个月的经济增长数据。尽管中国的主要经济增长数据被普遍认为不可靠，但中国经济在第三季度的增长率降至6.5%，为全球金融危机以来的最低水平。

The move by the central bank on Friday appeared to be part of a coordinated effort. Earlier in the day, Li Keqiang, the country’s premier, said China would move to shore up the economy through measures that included cutting bank reserve requirement ratios and lowering taxes.

中国央行上周五的举措似乎是一项协调努力的一部分。当天早些时候，中国总理李克强表示，中国将采取措施提振经济，包括下调银行存款准备金率和减税。

The central bank said it would cut its reserve requirement ratio — a measure of how much cash from deposits that lenders need to keep — by half a percentage point on Jan. 15 and another half a percentage point by Jan. 25.

中国央行表示，将于1月15日将存款准备金率下调0.5个百分点，并在1月25日前再下调0.5个百分点。存款准备金率是贷方需要从存款中保留多少现金的衡量指标。

The move will give banks more leeway to lend money, though analysts noted the net amount of money flowing into the system would be roughly half the $218 billion headline figure, as the central bank shuts off other sources of funds. It also comes roughly a month before China’s Lunar New Year holiday, when Chinese households sometimes strain the monetary system by spending more and by giving cash as gifts.

此举将给银行提供更多的放贷空间，不过分析人士指出，随着央行关闭其他资金来源，流入金融体系的资金净额将约为2180亿美元的一半。而且一个月左右之后，将是中国的春节假期，届时中国家庭会增加支出和赠送现金作为礼物，有时会给货币体系造成压力。

China has traditionally used its state-controlled banking system to flood the economy with money when growth slows. Last year, China cut the reserve ratio four times. But economists, small businesses and many others say the mechanism shovels money into big, inefficient companies or into investment bubbles instead of toward the smaller entrepreneurs who need it more.

中国传统上会利用其国有银行体系，在经济增长放缓时向经济注入大量资金。去年，中国四次下调存款准备金率。但经济学家、小企业和其他许多人说，这一机制将资金注入效率低下的大公司或投资泡沫，而不是流向更需要资金的小企业。

The cut “will be good for curbing the economic downturn and solving the financing difficulties of enterprises,” said Yu Yongding, an economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

此次降准“对抑制经济下滑，解决企业融资困难有好处”，中国社会科学院经济学家余永定表示。

“But this is just one policy,” Mr. Yu added, saying it risks pouring money into real estate and the stock market, which would do little to solve the economy’s problems. “We need a lot of other policies to cooperate.”

“但是这仅仅是一个政策，”余永定说。他表示，这可能会导致资金大量涌入房地产和股市，而这对解决经济问题几乎毫无帮助。“我们需要很多其他政策加以配合。”

For several weeks, economists and analysts have speculated that officials could move to push a hefty stimulus package that would give the flagging economy a shot in the arm. But such bold moves have become increasingly difficult for the Chinese government, which is contending with a huge debt load accumulated over the last decade to spur growth.

数周来，经济学家和分析人士一直在猜测，官员们可能会采取行动，推出一项庞大的刺激计划，给低迷的经济打一剂强心针。但对中国政府来说，这些大胆举措已变得越来越困难，目前它正与过去10年为刺激经济增长而累积的巨额债务作斗争。

Still, many analysts took the move as a sign that China’s leader would be proactive in heading off any worsening slump.

尽管如此，许多分析人士仍将此举视为一个信号，表明中国领导人将积极采取行动，防止经济进一步恶化。

“The central bank has made it clear that this wasn’t ‘releasing the floodwaters’ by providing a huge stimulus comparable to that introduced in 2009, but it is clear that they are redoubling efforts to stabilize the economy and the currency,” Geoffrey Yu, the head of the British investment office of the Swiss bank UBS, said in an email.

“央行已经明确表示，这不是通过提供2009年金融危机时候的那种大刺激来‘泄洪’，但很明显，他们加倍努力稳定经济和货币，”瑞士银行瑞银(UBS)的英国投资办公室主管余修远(Geoffrey Yu)在电子邮件中说。

“This swift action supports our view that there won’t be a sharp deceleration in the Chinese economy this year and that fears of a major global slowdown are overdone,” Mr. Yu added.

“这一迅速的行动支持了我们的观点，即中国经济今年不会大幅减速，对全球经济大幅放缓的担忧有些过头了，”余修远补充说。