广州翻译公司：上海浦江缆索公司翻身记

From debtor to winning bidder: a Chinese SOE turns around

上海浦江缆索公司翻身记

广州翻译公司：桑晓霓：这家中国国企从经营惨淡、无法偿还银行贷款到赢得国际合同，无论是否例外，这个故事至少令人振奋。

When Wei Zhang, founder of Yuanhao Capital, a Shanghai based investment firm, visited Shanghai Pujiang Cable a few years back, the state-owned enterprise was in dismal shape, unable to pay back its bankers the money it had borrowed from them.

当上海元昊投资管理有限公司(Yuanhao Capital)创始人张炜几年前去上海浦江缆索股份有限公司(Shanghai Pujiang Cable)的时候，这家国有企业经营惨淡，无法偿还银行贷款。广州翻译公司。

But Mr Zhang’s driver was impressed. “I asked him why he thought this company was so impressive,” Mr Zhang recalls, surprised the man had a view at all. “He told me, did you see the parking lot where the management park their cars? There are at least 20 luxury cars there!”

但张炜的司机却对这家公司印象深刻。张炜对司机竟然有看法感到意外，他回忆道：“我问他为何对这家公司这么印象深刻。他告诉我说，你看到停放管理层车辆的停车场了吗？那里至少有20辆豪车。”

Where the driver saw prosperity, his employer saw a symptom of the general dysfunctionality of most ofChina’s state-owned enterprises. At the time, the top tier of Shanghai Pujiang’s staff earned only about Rmb3,000 ($450) a month. It was predictable then that virtually every major supplier to the manufacturing company was headed by a relative of senior management; almost everyone in a position to engage in related party dealings did so and padded their expenses generously. Nobody gave a thought to the fact that customers often did not pay their bills for years, let alone made an attempt to collect the money owed.

司机看到的是财力，他的老板看到的是中国大多数国企的通病。当时，浦江缆索最高级别的员工每月薪资只有大约3000元人民币（合450美元）。意料之中的是，这家制造公司的几乎所有主要供应商都是由高级管理层的亲戚把持；几乎每个能够与关联方交易的人都在与关联方交易，而且大肆虚报费用。没有人考虑客户经常多年拖欠货款的问题，更别提努力收款了。广州翻译公司。

“Everyone cheated, many receipts are fake,” Mr Zhang remembers. “You can even find diaper receipts among business expense claims. Everyone was ripping off the company.”

张炜记得：“所有人都在舞弊，许多收据都是假的。你甚至可以在业务报销单据中发现购买尿不湿的收据。所有人都在抢劫这家公司。”

Today, the seemingly intractable lack of profitability of the state-owned enterprises, particularly in heavy industries such as steel, is giving rise to widespread despair.

现在，国有企业（尤其是在钢铁等重工业）似乎无法破除的盈利不足顽疾正在滋生大面积的绝望。

Steel is among those sectors that generate returns below their cost of capital, according to a study on Chinese productivity from McKinsey Global Institute. Chinese “steel production has become completely untethered from real market demand and is now more than double the combined production of the four next leading producers”, says a recent report from the European Union Chamber of Commerce inChina, giving a sense of the magnitude of the problem. Europe’s steel industry, including ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel company, has been among those suffering from the excess capacity of mainland steel firms.

麦肯锡全球研究所(McKinsey Global Institute)的一份关于中国生产率的研究报告显示，钢铁业是资本回报率低于资本成本的行业之一。中国欧盟商会(European Union Chamber of Commerce in China)最近发表报告指出，中国“钢铁产量完全脱离市场实际需求，现在是第二到第五大钢铁生产国产量总和的两倍多”，这让人感觉到这个问题有多么严重。欧洲钢铁行业，包括全球最大钢铁公司安赛乐米塔尔(ArcelorMittal)，就是中国内地钢铁公司过剩产能的受害者之一。广州翻译公司。

Even the news that two ofChina’s largest and most modern steel producers — Baosteel Group and Wuhan Iron & Steel — may merge in an effort to rationalise production has not dispelled investor gloom.

即便是宝钢集团(Baosteel Group)与武汉钢铁(Wuhan Iron & Steel)合并以优化产能的消息也没有打消投资者的悲观情绪。宝钢和武钢属于中国规模最大、现代化程度最高的钢铁生产商。

Mr Zhang, however, is not among the hand-wringers. His experience after buying Shanghai Pujiang is instructive. By raising salaries and changing the incentive structure, he gave his managers much less motivation to rip off the company. “Everyone steals,” he says. “They needed to understand that they are stealing from themselves.”

然而，张炜并非这些悲观者中的一员。他在收购浦江缆索后的经历颇具启发意义。通过提高薪资和改变激励制度，他降低了经理中饱私囊的动机。他说：“所有人都在侵占。他们需要明白，他们在侵占自己的东西。”

Mr Zhang had much to work with as he sought to turn around the company. The group was good at its core business of making cables for bridges that span bothChina’s rivers and those outside the country. Shanghai Pujiang won the international contract for the restoration of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, handily defeating Nippon Steel, partly by citing a price that was 30 per cent lower but also because its quality was sufficiently high.

张炜想扭转公司命运，他还有许多事情要做。浦江缆索非常擅长自己的核心业务，为横跨国内外江河的桥梁制造缆索。该公司曾轻松击败新日本制铁(Nippon Steel)，赢得美国旧金山奥克兰海湾大桥修复工程的国际合同，一定程度上是因为其报价低30%，但也是因为它的产品质量足够高。广州翻译公司。

Mr Zhang is a rare creature, an optimist about mainland prospects on both a macro and micro level. He believes that before President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive, misbehaviour and self-dealing were rampant. The private sector firms in which he invested were barely profitable because they spent so much money on banquets for officials and under-the-table red envelopes of cash, he says. Now, such behaviour has ceased.

张炜与众不同，无论是宏观还是微观层面都对内地前景保持乐观。他认为，在中国国家主席习近平开展反腐运动之前，不当行为和自我交易非常猖獗。他说，他投资的民营公司很少有盈利的，因为它们花了很多钱用于宴请官员和私下红包贿赂。现在，此类行为杜绝了。

Yet few business people inChinatoday feel as positive as Mr Zhang. They fear that what started as something laudatory has descended into witch hunting and persecution reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. Perhaps it is because so many fortunes started in irregular ways that don’t bear exposure to the sunlight. Fear of being seen to be corrupt has also made government and party bureaucrats more reluctant to take decisions, making it harder for businesses to move ahead with their plans. The impact has been devastating forChina’s already slowing economic growth. And there is still little consistency in how rules are enforced — who is allowed to take money out of the country and who is not, who gets a loan and who does not — these things remain unfathomable to people in the system and to those outside it.

然而，如今中国商人很少像张炜那么乐观。他们担心，起初被盛赞的反腐运动已沦为令人想起“文化大革命”的政治迫害。或许这是因为太多的财富产生于见不得光的非正当手段。由于担心被视为腐败，党政官员也更不愿做出决策，这让企业更难实施它们的计划。对中国已经放缓的经济增长而言，这种影响是灾难性的。此外规则的实施也缺乏一致——谁获准将资金带出境而谁不准，谁获得贷款而谁不能获得贷款——这些事情依然让体制内外的人们摸不着头脑。

But the story of Shanghai Pujiang is at least heartening whether it is exceptional or not.

但浦江缆索的故事至少令人振奋，无论它是否是一个例外。

广州翻译公司