The interbank market in China has seen rates soar in a reflection of tighter liquidity conditions as economic growth slows and savings are being pulled from deposits into higher yielding wealth management products.

中国银行间同业拆借市场的利率出现飙升，反映出流动性状况趋紧。目前，中国的经济增长有所放缓，同时人们纷纷将银行存款提出、转投收益率较高的理财产品。

Last week rates rose to 9.6 per cent before falling back to about 7 per cent on Friday. A month ago they were less than 3 per cent.

上周，银行间同业拆借利率一度飙升至9.6%，而后在上周五回落至7%左右。一个月前，该利率还不到3%。

Beijing seems to have tolerated this squeeze – which is also due to dividend repatriation, seasonal outflows and technical settlement issues – as a partly successful effort to slow sales of wealth management products in the shadow banks.

北京方面迄今似乎容忍这种流动性趋紧的局面——趋紧的原因还包括股息遣返、季节性外流以及技术性结算问题——作为遏制影子银行理财产品销售的努力，此举在一定程度上取得了成功。

Still, it is the latest sign that shadow banking activities are having a huge and often unpredictable impact on the real economy, affecting both the growth of credit and the stability of smaller banks.

不过，这个最新迹象显示，影子银行业活动正对实体经济造成巨大且往往不可预知的冲击，既影响到了信贷增长，又影响到了中小银行的稳定。

Concerns about the shadow banks – institutions that take money from savers seeking higher rates than those allowed on deposits and lend them to borrowers the banks officially shun – have become widespread, among government officials, bankers and investors. Fuelling the fears is a sense that the wealth management products lack transparency and often the ultimate borrower is the least desirable one.

在政府官员、银行家和投资者圈子中，对影子银行（即从希望得到高于银行存款的利率的储户那里吸纳资金、然后向银行在正式场合规避的借款人放贷的机构）的担忧已变得相当普遍。加剧这种担忧的是，人们普遍感觉，理财产品缺乏透明度，而且最终借款人往往是最不靠谱的债务人。

In addition, many of these products are funded with short-term capital, making them vulnerable to a maturity mismatch, since these products generally have a life of only a few months while the projects they finance are often long term.

此外，此类产品有很多是以短期资金为融资来源，因此容易受到期限错配的冲击（此类产品的投资期限通常只有几个月，而它们所资助的项目往往是长期的）。

There are no definitive numbers of the size of the outstanding financing shadow banks provide but it could amount to about Rmb21tn ($3.4tn) or about 40 per cent of GDP, according to Deutsche Bank, with the wealth management products worth about Rmb15tn, while Merrill Lynch puts the figure at about Rmb11tn.

没有什么确切数字显示影子银行体系的未偿还融资规模到底有多大，但据德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)估算，这个数字可能达到大约21万亿元人民币（合3.4万亿美元），相当于中国国内生产总值(GDP)的40%，其中理财产品的总价值达到大约15万亿元人民币。美林(Merrill Lynch)估计的数字则为大约11万亿元人民币。

Analysts have posed as potential investors in these products, visiting local branches of Chinese banks to understand where the funds are going and how they are being marketed.

一些分析师曾冒充此类产品的潜在投资者，走访中国某些银行的分支行，以了解资金的去向以及这些产品的营销方式。

According to some analysts, the products marketed to them include loans to real estate developers, loans to local government financing vehicles, often for land acquisition backed by undisclosed receivables, or for infrastructure projects such as roads, or to acquire assets such as factories.

据一些分析师表示，银行方面向他们推销的产品包括：向房地产开发商提供的贷款，向地方政府融资工具提供的贷款，后者往往用于收购土地（以未披露的应收款项作为抵押），或者用于道路等基础设施项目，或是去收购工厂等资产。