Banks, despite their conservative exterior, had a big hand in shadow financing. They got around caps on deposit rates by funnelling savings into opaque "wealth-management products", a chunk of which flowed through the shadow firms. Some of these products offered yields of over 10%. Yet they enjoyed informal guarantees from the state-owned banks, making investors think that they were as safe as deposits. The shadow-banking industry grew to 28.5% of banks' total assets in 2016.
银行虽然表面上保守，但其实深度参与了影子融资。它们绕过存款利率上限这一障碍，把储户存款注入不透明的“理财产品”，其中的大头流入了影子金融公司。其中一些产品的收益率超过10％。但它们还享有国有银行的非正式担保，让投资者认为它们和存款一样安全。2016年，影子银行业务规模增至占银行业总资产的28.5％。
Around that time a series of messy defaults alerted regulators to the dangers. They began a campaign to unwind the shadow financing. They forced trust companies to hold more capital. They stopped banks from offering guarantees on wealth products. And they opened the door to a new professional fund industry, pressing banks to launch formal wealth-management subsidiaries, rather like asset-management groups in developed markets.
大约就在那时，一系列的违约乱象让监管部门意识到了其中的风险。它们开始展开一场去影子运动。它们要求信托公司提高资本金，禁止银行为理财产品提供担保，为一个新的专业化的基金行业打开大门，要求银行成立正式的理财子公司，就像发达市场的那些资产管理集团那样。
Banks are barred from investing in equities but the new divisions face no such rules. They cannot, however, offer guarantees. Contracts specify that in a downturn investors will face losses. Some banks' wealth units manage their own funds; others team up with outside managers. Much of the money flows into the stockmarket.
银行被禁止投资股市，而新设的理财子公司不受这些限制。不过理财子公司不能提供担保。合同写明，市场下跌时，投资者将面临损失。有一些银行的理财子公司管理自己的基金，也有一些与外部财富管理公司合作。这些资金有很大一部分流入了股市。
The ubiquity of mobile payments has given ordinary people another route to funds. With a few taps users of Alipay or WeChat Pay can choose from hundreds of products. China's 100m or so retail punters have long believed that they can beat professional investors. But that sentiment has shifted over the past two years and many are now buying into mutual funds at record pace, says Desiree Wang of JPMorgan Asset Management. Much as retail investors have been vocal on social media about the performance of individual stocks, they now debate, laud and criticise the performance of the country's top fund managers.
移动支付的普及给老百姓提供了又一条投资基金的途径。只消点击几下手机屏幕，支付宝或微信支付的用户就可以在成百上千种产品里做选择。中国约有一亿散户投资者，他们一直自以为能打败专业投资者。但过去两年，这种观念发生了转变，许多人现在正以破纪录的速度买入共同基金，摩根资产管理公司的王琼慧表示。散户投资者过去在社交媒体上大谈个股表现，同样，他们现在也会辩论和褒贬国内顶级基金经理的业绩。
Funds are also becoming more sophisticated. Since the global financial crisis a stream of Chinese nationals has returned to Hong Kong and Shanghai from London and New York, bringing a new set of skills, says Louis Luo of Aberdeen Standard Investments, an asset manager. Funds once limited to plain-vanilla active management have brought in specialists to launch quantitative and absolute-return funds.
基金也变得更为复杂。安本标准投资管理（Aberdeen Standard Investments）的罗勋表示，自全球金融危机以来，大批中国人从伦敦和纽约回流香港和上海，带来一系列新技能。以往只做简单的主动管理的基金公司现在聘雇专家来推出量化绝对收益基金。
These trends have been magnified at China's big mutual funds. Three of the largest mutual-fund companies—China Asset Management, e-Fund and Southern Asset Management—have each surpassed 1trn yuan in assets under management. The rate of growth at mutual funds and at the banks' wealth-management arms is projected to take professionally managed assets in China from around 96trn yuan ($14.7trn) in 2020 to 244trn yuan in 2029, or near the current size of the asset-management industry in America.
这些趋势在中国大型共同基金公司中更加突显。华夏基金、易方达基金和南方基金是中国三大共同基金公司，管理的资产规模均超过了一万亿元。按照共同基金和银行理财子公司的增长速度，预计到2029年，中国由专业机构管理的资产将从2020年的约96万亿元增长到244万亿元，接近美国的资产管理行业目前的规模。
