As China suffers a rise in company defaults and an increase in corporate¹ downgrades, the need for a credit default swap² market in the country has become more pressing. And now it looks likely the People’s Bank of China will give the hedging scheme the go-ahead in coming months.

中国的企业违约和企业评级下调增多之际，它对信用违约互换(CDS)市场的需要已变得愈发迫切。现在看起来，中国央行似乎将于近月放行这种对冲机制。

This is the second time interested parties have tried to establish the market, which would allow participants to buy and sell credit insurance that pays out if a Chinese company fails to make payments on its debts. The fact that it is now likely to succeed is a sign of how much has changed in China.

这是对此感兴趣的各方第二次试图建立这一市场。该市场将让参与者能够买卖一种信用保险，如果一家中国企业发生债务违约，这种信用保险会进行赔付。该市场如今有较大可能成功建立，这一事实显示出中国已发生了多大的变化。

In 2010, the little known National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors³ first attempted to introduce the product, which allows banks and other investors to hedge the risk of default. But the market never took off for a variety of reasons.

2010年，少有人知的中国银行间市场交易商协会(National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investor)首次试图引入信用违约互换。该产品使得银行及其他投资者能够对冲违约风险。然而，出于种种原因，该市场始终没有建立起来。

For one thing, in 2010 there were almost no defaults. Most borrowers and issuers in the capital market were state-owned, and had government backing. Meanwhile, almost all potential participants saw the market in the same light — as an easy and riskless way to collect premium⁴ income by selling such insurance. “At the time, everyone wanted to sell,” says the head of markets in China for one large international bank. “It would have been very one-sided.”

一个原因是，2010年那时候几乎不存在违约。资本市场多数借款方和发行方都是国有企业，有政府撑腰。同时，几乎所有潜在参与者都认为，该市场是通过销售此类保险轻而易举又毫无风险地获得保费收入的途径。一家大型跨国银行在华的市场部门主管表示：“当时，所有人想的都是卖出。那样的话将是一个高度一边倒的市场。”

Today, by contrast, the number of defaults is rising. Being state-owned no longer means that the government stands behind every borrower. As of mid-August, 41 companies defaulted on Rmb25.4bn worth of bonds since the beginning of the year. In addition, many more companies are being downgraded. Indeed, there were more than 1,000 ratings downgrades in the past two months alone according to a report from Credit Suisse, citing Wind Information. That makes the need for the market more obvious and suggests it will not be as one-sided as in the past.

相比之下，如今违约的数目在攀升。国有的身份不再意味着政府会为每个借款方撑腰。今年年初至8月中旬，已有41家企业的价值254亿元人民币的债券违约。此外，更多的企业正被下调评级。事实上，瑞士信贷(Credit Suisse)一份援引万得资讯(Wind Information)数据的报告称，仅过去两个月就发生了逾1000起评级下调。这一局面使得信用违约互换市场的必要性更加明显，也意味着该市场将不会像过去那样一边倒。

Also at that time, credit rating was in its infancy⁵ and there was little trading in the secondary market. Even in the US, there is concern with the accuracy of pricing of many names in the corporate debt market. In China, it was almost impossible to price or mark to market a security or a loan with any accuracy back then.

同样是在那时，信用评级还处于起步阶段，二级市场交易清淡。即使在美国，人们也在担心对公司债市场上的许多产品定价是否准确。在那时候的中国，几乎不可能准确地为证券或贷款定价或按市值计价。

Moreover, six years ago, regulators wished to limit participation⁶ in the market to banks. “But the whole point was for banks to eliminate the risk of their exposure, not to pass it around among themselves, so that stance made no sense,” says the executive in charge of risk management at a Shanghai-based fintech company, who was a participant in those early discussions.

此外，6年前，监管机构希望仅限银行参与这一市场。“但这一市场的全部意义就是让银行削减其敞口的风险，而不是相互转嫁风险，因此这一立场是毫无道理的，”一名曾参与早先的那些讨论、目前在上海一家金融科技公司负责风险管理的高管表示。

However, not all the details have been hammered out and issues remain.

然而，并非所有细节都已敲定，问题依然存在。

In the US, for example, there has always been a debate about the problem of perverse⁷ incentives⁸, when buyers of protection can make money from the demise⁹ of a company. Hedge funds and even banks have been suspected of having small and transparent¹⁰ long exposures to a given credit but massive short exposures by quietly purchasing credit insurance. As the cost of insurance increases, it then causes both the price of the debt and the stock to go down, triggering a death spiral.

比如，在美国，考虑到信用保险的购买者可以从相应企业的倒闭中牟利，一直都存在关于不当激励问题的辩论。人们一直怀疑，对冲基金乃至银行一方面公开小额买入一只信用债，另一方面又通过悄悄买入信用保险来大规模做空这只信用债。随着保险成本上升，会导致债务价格和股价双双下滑，触发致命的恶性循环。

Trading will take place in Shanghai and likely involve the Shanghai clearing house. But it also is not yet clear whether it will serve as a central clearing house that will stand in-between both sides, and be the counterparty of each, given the fact that the big state-owned banks, who are likely to be big players, have higher credit ratings.

信用违约互换的交易地点将在上海，上海清算所(Shanghai Clearing House)很可能会参与进来。但是，考虑到可能成为重要市场参与者的大型国有银行拥有较高的信用评级，目前还不清楚上海清算所将在其中扮演何种角色——是作为居间的中央清算机构，还是作为每一方的交易对手。

The coal-dependent province of Shanxi is one example of those keen to benefit from a CDS scheme. Shanxi’s provincial¹¹ government said earlier this month it was looking into CDSs as a way of helping¹² its troubled coal companies. The provincial government is proposing setting up a financial services company (based on the model of China Bond Insurance Company) aimed at improving the financing of Shanxi’s companies — mainly through CDS trading.

经济依赖煤炭的省份山西省是热切希望从信用违约互换机制中受惠的例子。山西省政府本月早些时候表示，正在研究如何能利用信用违约互换帮助本省陷入困境的煤炭企业。它还提出设立一家金融服务公司（参照中债信用增进公司(CBICL)的模式），以求改善山西企业的融资状况——主要是通过信用违约互换交易。

Shanxi is going through a crisis of bad debt, with a state-owned enterprise defaulting on a bond in April.

山西正在经历坏账危机，该省一家国有企业今年4月发生债券违约。