纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英中国股市螺旋式下滑日股表现强劲引发关注

There’s a shift underway in Asia that’s reverberating through global financial markets.

亚洲发生的转变正在影响全球金融市场。

Japan’s stock market, overlooked by investors for decades, is making a furious comeback. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index is edging closer to the record it set on Dec. 29, 1989, which effectively marked the peak of Japan’s economic ascendancy before a collapse that led to decades of low growth.

被投资者忽视了几十年的日本股市正在疯狂反弹。日经225指数正逐渐接近1989年12月29日创下的纪录。那一天实际上标志着日本经济上升期的顶峰，但随后的崩溃导致了数十年的低增长。

China, long an impossible-to-ignore market, has been spiraling downward. Stocks in China recently touched lows not seen since a rout in 2015, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was the worst-performing major market in the world last year. Stocks stemmed their slide only when Beijing recently signaled its intention to intervene but remain far below previous highs.

长期以来，中国一直是一个不容忽视的市场，但它一直在螺旋式下滑。中国股市最近触及了自2015年暴跌以来的最低点，而香港恒生指数是去年全球表现最差的主要市场。直到北京最近表示有意干预，股市才止住跌势，但仍远低于前期高点。

This year was set to be a tumultuous one for global markets, with unpredictable swings as economic fortunes diverge and voters in more than 50 countries go to the polls. But there’s one unforeseen reversal already underway: a change in perception among investors about China and Japan.

对全球市场来说，今年注定是动荡的一年。随着经济命运的分化，以及50多个国家的选民进行投票，全球市场将出现不可预测的波动。但一个意想不到的逆转已经出现：投资者对中国和日本的看法发生了变化。

Seizing on this shift, Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, addressed more than 3,000 global financiers gathered in Hong Kong this week for a conference sponsored by Goldman Sachs. It was the first time a Japanese prime minister had given a keynote address at the event.

日本首相岸田文雄抓住了这个契机，本周他在高盛主办的香港会议上向3000多名全球金融家发表讲话。这是日本首相首次在该活动上发表主题演讲。

“Now Japan has a golden opportunity to completely overcome low economic growth and a deflationary environment that have persisted for a quarter of a century,” Mr. Kishida said in a video recording. His government, he said, would “demonstrate to all of you Japan’s transition to a new economic stage by mobilizing all the policy tools.”

岸田文雄在一段视频录像中说，“现在，日本有一个绝好的机会，去彻底克服持续了25年的低经济增长和通缩环境。”他说，他的政府将“动员所有政策工具，向大家展示日本向新经济阶段的过渡”。

It’s the kind of message that Japan has been honing for a decade, and now investors want to hear more of it. Foreign investors pumped $2.6 billion into the Japanese stock market last week, adding to $6.5 billion the week before, according to data from Japan Exchange Group. That is a stark shift from the roughly $3.6 billion that was yanked out in December.

这是日本十年来一直在打造的讯息，现在投资者希望听到更多这样的讯息。根据日本交易所集团的数据，外国投资者上周向日本股市注入了26亿美元，上上周则是65亿美元。这和撤出了约36亿美元的12月可谓天壤之别。

All that money has sent Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 surging about 8 percent this month. The market is up over 30 percent over the past 12 months. This week, Toyota rose to a record market value for a Japanese company, about $330 billion, surpassing the mark set in 1987 by the telecom conglomerate NTT.

所有这些资金促使东京的日经225指数本月飙升了约8%。股市在过去12个月里上涨了30%以上。本周，丰田的市值升至3300亿美元左右，超过了日本电信集团NTT在1987年创下的纪录。

A combination of factors has contributed to Japan’s recent success. A weak yen has made stocks look cheap to foreign investors, and it has been a boon to exporters and multinationals based in Japan that make their profits overseas. Important reforms to the corporate sector have given shareholders more rights, enabling them to call for changes in strategy and management. Unlike inflation in other parts of the world, rising inflation in Japan has been a sign that things are headed in the right direction, after decades of falling prices and sluggish economic growth dampened appetite among consumers and companies to spend.

日本近期的成功是多种因素共同作用的结果。日元走软令外国投资者觉得日本股票很便宜，这对总部设在日本、在海外赚取利润的出口商和跨国公司来说是个福音。企业部门的重要改革赋予了股东更多权利，使他们能够要求改变战略和管理。与世界其他地区的通货膨胀不同，日本通胀率的上升表明，在经历了数十年的物价下跌和经济增长乏力，消费者和企业的消费欲望受到抑制之后，日本正朝着正确的方向发展。

And there is one additional factor: geopolitics. The longer-term prospects for Japan, the third-largest economy, are looking good when parts of the world are souring on the second-largest economy, China.

还有一个额外因素：地缘政治。在世界部分地区对第二大经济体中国感到不满之际，全球第三大经济体日本的长期前景看起来还不错。

“One of the best things to happen to Japan is China,” said Seth Fischer, the founder and chief investment officer at Oasis Management, a hedge fund based in Hong Kong.

“对日本来说，最大利好之一就是中国，”香港对冲基金绿洲管理公司(Oasis Management)的创始人兼首席投资官赛斯·费舍尔说。

“Japan has for 10 years been working on creating a more productive corporate environment and a better place to be an equity investor through consistently trying to improve value,” Mr. Fischer said. “People don’t believe the same about China.”

“10年来，日本一直在努力创造一个更高效的企业环境，通过不断努力提高价值，为股票投资者创造一个更好的地方，”费希尔说。“人们不相信中国也会如此。”

In a recent survey of global fund managers by Bank of America, selling Chinese stocks and buying Japanese stocks were two of the three most popular trade ideas. (The other was to load up on high-flying U.S. tech stocks.)

美国银行最近对全球基金经理进行的一项调查显示，卖出中国股票和买入日本股票是最受欢迎的三个交易概念中的两个。（还有一种是增持涨势迅猛的美国科技股。）

China’s ruling Communist Party has sought to insert itself into the business sector in recent years, leaving investors worried that politics often trumps the bottom line for many of China’s corporate titans. The blurring of politics and business has also raised concerns in Washington and in European capitals, leading to regulations that have prevented foreign investments into certain sectors and companies.

近年来，执政的中国共产党一直试图介入商业领域，这让投资者担心，对许多中国企业巨头来说，政治往往胜过利润。政治和商业的模糊也引起了华盛顿和欧洲各国政府的担忧，导致出台了阻止外国投资进入某些行业和公司的法规。

China has not struggled for economic growth like Japan, but a protracted property market collapse has shredded consumer and investor confidence. Lingering issues with China’s economy have exacerbated weakness in the country’s currency, the yuan.

中国不像日本那样为经济增长而苦苦挣扎，但旷日持久的房地产市场崩溃粉碎了消费者和投资者的信心。中国经济挥之不去的问题加剧了人民币的疲软。

Much of the negative sentiment has played out in Hong Kong, an open market where global investors traditionally place their bets on China and its companies. The market was pummeled last year, and it slipped further over the first three weeks of this year.

大量悲观情绪来自香港，这里是一个开放的市场，全球投资者历来都在这里押注中国和中国企业。香港市场去年遭受重创，今年前三周进一步下滑。

Beijing intervened this week to try to reverse the sell-off. On Monday, the country’s No. 2 official, Premier Li Qiang, called on the authorities to be more “forceful” and take more measures to “improve market confidence.” His speech lifted stocks, as did a report from Bloomberg, citing unnamed officials, that the authorities were contemplating a $278 billion market rescue.

北京本周进行了干预，试图扭转抛售趋势。周一，中国第二号官员、总理李强呼吁当局更加“有力”，采取更多措施来“稳市场、稳信心”。他的讲话提振了股市，彭博社援引未具名官员的话报道称，当局正在考虑一项2780亿美元的救市计划。

Then on Wednesday, the central bank, the People’s Bank of China, freed commercial banks to do more lending, essentially pumping $139 billion into the market by lowering the amount of money banks are required to keep in reserve. Regulators also loosened rules for how indebted property developers could pay back loans.

然后在周三，中国央行——中国人民银行放开了商业银行的放贷，通过降低银行的存款准备金率，实际上等于向市场注入了1390亿美元。监管机构还放松了对负债累累的房地产开发商如何偿还贷款的规定。

The words and actions propelled the market higher this week, with the Hang Seng Index posting three of its best days this year. China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen markets also bounced, though not by as much.

这些言论和行动推动股市本周走高，恒生指数创下今年以来最好的三个交易日。中国上海和深圳股市也出现反弹，不过幅度没有那么大。

But many investors say the measures have failed to address a much bigger problem: China’s economic trajectory. They remain disappointed with China’s response to its broader economic slump and its perceived reluctance to pull off a showstopping stimulus, as it did in previous periods of economic stress.

但许多投资者表示，这些措施未能解决一个更大的问题：中国的经济走向。他们仍然对中国应对大范围经济衰退的方式感到失望，也对中国被认为不愿像以往经济紧张时期那样推出引人注目的刺激措施感到失望。

“We hope it will still happen,” said Daniel Morris, an analyst at BNP Paribas, referring to a more substantial effort to prop up markets. “But we don’t have confidence that it will. I honestly would have thought that at the end of last year all the bad news had to be priced in, and yet we have fallen further again this year.”

法国巴黎银行分析师丹尼尔·莫里斯表示：“我们希望它仍然会发生。”他指的是政府为提振市场而做出的更大努力。“但我们对此没有信心。老实说，我本以为去年年底所有的坏消息都已经反映在价格中了，但今年我们又进一步下跌了。”

Economists, financiers and corporate executives around the world looked to China last year for an economic rebound after its government scrapped its “zero Covid” policy, punishing lockdowns that at times put the country into an economic freeze. But Chinese consumers didn’t participate in the kind of “revenge spending” seen elsewhere after reopenings, and a property crisis has weighed on families, many of whom have nearly three-quarters of their savings tied up in real estate.

去年，在中国政府取消了严厉封锁、令中国经济陷入冻结的“清零”政策之后，世界各地的经济学家、金融家和企业高管都在期待中国经济反弹。但中国消费者并没有像其他地方那样，在经济开放后进行“报复性消费”，而且房地产危机给家庭带来了压力，许多家庭将近四分之三的储蓄都投入了房地产。

“There is not much confidence domestically, and then you have a government that isn’t very interested in supporting the economy,” said Louis Kuijs, chief Asia economist at S&P Global Ratings. “Markets somehow had expected much more and are becoming increasingly disappointed and disillusioned.”

“国内信心不足，政府对支持经济也不太感兴趣，”标普全球评级首席亚洲经济学家高路易(Louis Kuijs)表示。“市场本来有更高的预期，现在正变得越来越失望和幻灭。”

And the ranks of the disillusioned include some Chinese investors, who have been moving money into exchange-traded funds that track Japanese stocks. At times these funds’ prices have traded far above the value of their underlying assets, a sign of investors’ enthusiasm to invest.

失望的人群中包括一些中国投资者，他们纷纷将资金转入追踪日本股票的交易所交易基金。有时，这些基金的交易价格远高于其标的资产的价值，这表明了投资者的投资热情。