【英语财经】投资者对中国债市的担心过头了？ Worries mount over China’s bond market

Two-plus years of a near-unbroken rally and a market may perhaps be forgiven for a pullback — unless that market is in China, where the sharpest monthly jump in bond yields since the rally began has prompted worries another mainland boom looks to be on borrowed time.

Concerns about a rise in defaults, excess leverage and doubts about the likelihood of more monetary easing has sapped investor appetite and overshadowed China’s massive bond market.

A series of defaults and near-defaults by state-owned enterprises (SOE) have dominated attention since SOE’s government backing had, until now, been considered a guarantee of prompt and full payment. Last month. two SOEs missed scheduled bond payments, while a third suspended trading of its notes and warned it would struggle to make a payment due this month.

Rising yields, which move inversely with price, have deterred other borrowers, with corporate issuance halving to Rmb641bn last month from its rate in March, according to data from Wind Information.

Yields on benchmark five-year government bonds rose from 2.47 per cent at the start of April to 2.8 per cent last week — a three-month high, and their sharpest one-month move since November 2013.

Crucially, the difference or risk premium between government borrowing yields and those paid by low-rated companies widened to a four-month high, illustrating growing concern of hard landing beckoning for the market.

Bankers, however, play down the risk that defaults could cause a wider panic.

“To me this is a healthy repricing that we’ve seen,” says Beng Hong Lee, head of China markets at Deutsche Bank. “Look across China and for a long time defaults have been extremely low. That has resulted in mispricing of risk and the expectations that the government or a bank will come to the rescue.”

The upward pressure on yields has occurred as China prepares to open its bond markets to outside investors via a new scheme that eases access. The mainland is already the third-largest debt market in the world, with some $7tn outstanding, yet foreigners hold less than 2 per cent. Bankers are sanguine that April’s storms will not deter the kind of long-term investment Beijing is keen to attract.

“The key to the move higher is that this is the repricing that everyone has been saying was needed and at the end of the process you will have a more attractively priced asset,” Mr Lee says. “After all, offshore investors aren’t going to come in if credit spreads go to zero.”

Liquidity has also played a part in pushing up yields as improving economic data have prompted investors to scale back expectations for further loosening of monetary policy.

China’s seven-day bond repurchase rate is considered a benchmark for liquidity in the country’s interbank money market, especially since the People’s Bank of China moved to conduct daily market operations, up from twice-weekly, earlier this year. Last week, however, the rate reached 2.7 per cent, a level not seen since the stock market rout in July last year.

Zhou Hao, senior emerging markets economist at Commerzbank in Singapore, says: “As activity data are improving and inflation expectations are picking up due to rising food prices and property overheating, the market expects less aggressive monetary policy easing.”

Previous expectations of easier policy have also encouraged a build-up of leverage in the market, which could have put some investors in precarious positions. Banks and other investors have increasingly funded new bond purchases with short-term borrowing — essentially relying on PBoC cash injections to keep borrowing costs low.

Monthly transaction volume in the repo market — short-term loans that use bonds as collateral — has surged and now exceeds total bonds outstanding, a sign of the popularity of this trade.

The risk for the market is that further rises in money market rates makes the trade unprofitable and forces investors to unload their bond holdings en masse. Any further pickup of corporate bond defaults could similarly spark a rush to the exit.

Analysts are keen to point out, however, that recent volatility appears to be mainly sentiment driven. They say actual cash conditions remain relatively loose and the central bank has in general still been injecting cash into the system in a sign that it intends to maintain ample liquidity.

Should the economy not worsen significantly or the PBoC change tack on liquidity, most analysts expect a stabilisation of China’s bond markets in the coming weeks. The one caveat, they warn: tax.

As of this week repo deals will be taxed as part of broad tax reform affecting the services sector centred on a shift from a turnover tax to one based on value-added charges.

Officials say that in the aggregate, the reform will reduce the tax burden on services firms, but some individual business lines will see taxes rise. The impact on bond trading is especially large, since traders say that in practice, the turnover tax was often not assessed at all.

A bond trader at a city-level bank in Shanghai, says: “The tax issue is quite significant. No one knows yet how big an impact it will have, but people are worried.”

Additional reporting by Ma Nan

如果一个市场两年多来几乎连续不断地上涨，那么回调一下也情有可原，除非这个市场是在中国——中国债券收益率出现了自此轮牛市启动以来的最大月度涨幅，这令一些人担心中国内地的又一场繁荣看起来已时日无多。

债务违约增多引发的担忧、过高的杠杆、再加上进一步出台货币宽松政策的可能性存疑，令投资者的兴趣日减，并为中国庞大的债券市场蒙上了阴影。

一系列国企违约和近乎违约的事件已成为人们关注的焦点，之所以这么说，是因为迄今为止，国企获得的政府支持一直被视为其债券得到及时全额兑付的保证。上月，两家国企未能按期兑付债券，另外还有一家国企暂停其债券交易并提醒市场自己将很难兑付本月到期的债券。

收益率（与价格走势相反）不断上升令其他借款者畏缩不前，万得资讯(Wind Information)的数据显示，与3月份相比，上月企业债券发行量缩减了一半，至6410亿元人民币。

基准的5年期国债收益率从4月初的2.47%升至上周的2.8%，创下3个月来的高点，这一月度变动幅度也是自2013年11月以来最大的。

关键是，国债收益率和那些低评级企业债券的收益率之间的差额（即风险溢价）扩大至4个月来的高点，表明人们越来越担心债券市场的硬着陆风险。

但银行家们并不认为这些违约有较大可能引发更大的恐慌。

德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)中国市场业务负责人李民宏(Beng Hong Lee)表示：“对我来说，我们看到的是一种健康的重新定价。纵观整个中国，长期以来违约案例极为少见，这造成了风险的错误定价，并使得人们预期政府或银行最终会出手相救。”

在债券收益率承受上行压力之际，中国正准备通过一个放宽准入条件的新计划向外部投资者开放其债券市场。中国内地债市已是全球第三大债券市场，债券存量达到约7万亿美元，然而外国人持有的比例不足2%。银行家们乐观地认为，4月的风暴不会吓阻中国渴望吸引的那类长期投资。

李民宏表示：“债券收益率走高的关键是，这是所有人都一直说有必要出现的重新定价，这个过程结束时，你将拥有价格上更诱人的资产。毕竟，如果信贷息差为零的话，离岸投资者不会进场。”

流动性因素也在推高收益率方面起到了作用，因为逐渐改善的经济数据促使投资者相应地降低了对货币政策进一步放松的预期。

中国的7天国债回购利率被视为银行间货币市场的流动性基准，尤其是在中国央行今年早些时候把公开市场操作的频率从一周两次调整为每个工作日一次以后。然而，上周7天回购利率达到了2.7%，为去年7月股市暴跌以来未见的水平。

德国商业银行(Commerzbank)驻新加坡高级新兴市场经济学家周浩表示：“随着经济活动数据不断改善、食品价格上涨和楼市过热导致通胀预期上升，市场预期货币政策宽松的力度将会变小。”

此前对更宽松政策的预期也助长了市场中杠杆的形成，这可能使一些投资者处于危险的境地。银行和其他投资者越来越多地靠短期借款来筹措资金购买新债券——这实际上是依靠中国央行的资金注入来把借款成本维持在低位。

质押式回购（以债券为抵押的短期贷款）市场月度交易额激增，现在的规模已经超过债券存量总额，显示出这种交易十分风行。



市场面临的风险是，货币市场利率的进一步上升将使这类交易无利可图，迫使投资者集体将他们持有的债券平仓。企业债券违约若进一步增多，同样可能导致投资者争相平仓。

然而，分析师们敏锐地指出，最近的波动看起来主要是市场情绪驱动的。他们表示，实际的货币环境依然相对宽松，中国央行总体上依然在向系统中注入资金，这表明它有意保持充足的流动性。



大多数分析师预期，如果经济不显著恶化、或者中国央行不改变流动性方面的策略，中国的债券市场将在接下来的数周里稳定下来。不过，他们对一点提出了警告：税。

本周起，回购交易将依据以“营改增”为核心、影响整个服务业的广泛税改征税。

官员们表示，这一改革将在总体上减少服务业企业的税负，但某些业务领域的税负将会加重。债券交易受到的影响尤其大，交易员们表示，在实践中，营业税往往根本未被核定。

上海一家城市银行的一名债券交易员表示：“税的问题非常大。没人知道会带来多大的影响，但人们很担心。”

Ma Nan补充报道

译者/何黎