纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英中国企业IPO为何大幅减少

There was a time when a Chinese internet company’s initial public offering was the hottest thing on Wall Street.

曾经有一段时间，中国互联网公司的首次公开募股是华尔街最炙手可热的事情。

As the e-commerce giant Alibaba prepared to go public on the New York Stock Exchange a decade ago, the world’s biggest banks competed fiercely to underwrite the offering. When the opening bell rang on Sept. 19, 2014, stock traders cheered, wearing hoodies in Alibaba’s signature orange over their suits. The I.P.O. raised $25 billion, the biggest listing ever at the time. Scores of other Chinese companies raised billions in the United States over the next few years.

十年前，电商巨头阿里巴巴准备在纽约证券交易所上市时，全球最大的银行展开了激烈竞争，希望能成为承销商。2014年9月19日的开市钟声响起时，股票交易员们欢呼雀跃，在西装外面套上了橙色帽衫，那是阿里巴巴的代表色。那次IPO募资250亿美元，是当时规模最大的一次上市。在接下来的几年里，还有许多中国公司在美国筹集了数十亿美元。

Those days are firmly in the past. Wall Street has not seen anything close to a blockbuster Chinese I.P.O. in three years. In fact, the drought is getting worse. So far this year, Chinese companies have raised about $580 million in U.S. listings, almost all of it last month from one I.P.O. by the electric vehicle maker Zeekr.

那些日子已经彻底成了过去。三年来，华尔街再未见过中国企业IPO有类似的盛况。事实上，枯竭的状况变得越来越严重。今年到目前为止，中国公司在美国股市筹集了约5.8亿美元，几乎全部来自电动汽车制造商极氪上个月的IPO。

As the geopolitical relationship between China and the United States has deteriorated, it has become increasingly difficult for Chinese companies to find a foreign market where a listing might not be jeopardized by political scrutiny.

随着中美地缘政治关系的恶化，中国企业越来越难以找到一个不受政治关切所累的海外股票市场。

Things are hardly looking better in China. As part of a push by Beijing to assert greater control over the Chinese market, regulators have made it harder to go public, drastically slowing the pace of domestic listings. Around 40 Chinese companies have gone public at home this year. They have raised less than $3 billion, a fraction of the value typically raised by this point in the year, according to data from Dealogic.

中国国内的情况也好不到哪里去。作为中国政府推动加强对股市控制的举措之一，监管机构加大了上市难度，大幅放缓了国内上市的速度。今年到目前为止，约有40家中国公司在国内上市。据金融数据提供商Dealogic的数据，它们筹集的资金不到30亿美元，与往年通常到了这个时候筹集到的资金相比，仅为一个零头。

If the current pace continues, this year will bring the fewest Chinese initial public offerings worldwide in more than a decade.

如果目前的速度继续下去，今年中国IPO的数量将是十多年来最少的。

The slowdown is a major shift from a period when multibillion-dollar listings by Chinese tech companies helped fuel a Gilded Age of private business in China. The former bounty in public listings reshaped how start-ups raised money, attracting more private capital from outside China while allowing foreign and domestic investors to move money out of the country.

与过去中国科技公司的数十亿美元上市交易推动了中国私营企业的黄金时代相比，现在上市放缓是一个重大转变。之前，上市带来的丰厚回报重塑了初创企业融资的方式，吸引了更多境外私人资本，同时允许国内外投资者将资金转移到国外。

The shift shows how China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has remade private business, bringing it firmly under government and Chinese Communist Party control. Officials have forced successful companies off the public stock markets, jailed entrepreneurs and abruptly barred booming industries from making profits.

这种转变显示出中国最高领导人习近平是如何对私营企业加以重塑，将其牢牢置于政府和中国共产党控制之下的。官员们强迫成功的企业退市，将企业家送进监狱，并且会突然出手，禁止蓬勃发展的行业盈利。

“A lot of these uses of capital that were going through the private sector and the stock market were a potential risk to the party’s influence,” said Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital, an economic research firm in Hong Kong.

香港的经济研究公司东方资本的董事总经理安德鲁·科利尔表示：“许多通过私营企业和股票市场进行的资本运用，对党的影响力构成了潜在风险。”

The uncertainty generated by Mr. Xi’s crackdown has wiped billions of dollars in value from China’s tech industry and prompted U.S. venture capital firms to sharply roll back their investments in China.

习近平的打压行动引发的不确定性使得中国科技行业跌掉了数十亿美元的身价，并促使美国风险投资公司大幅减少在中国的投资。

At the same time, Chinese companies are uncertain about the scrutiny they could face if they try to go public in the United States as tensions escalate between Washington and Beijing. “Nobody really wants to test the waters,” said Murong Yang, managing director at Future Capital Discovery Fund in Beijing.

与此同时，随着华盛顿和北京之间的紧张局势升级，中国公司不确定，如果它们试图在美国上市，可能会面临什么样的审视。“没有人真的想试水，”北京明势资本的董事总经理杨慕融表示。

In February, after reports that Shein, the Chinese-founded online shopping company, sought to go public in the United States, Senator Marco Rubio urged the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission to block the listing if the company refused to share information about ties to the Chinese government.

今年2月有报道称，创办于中国的在线购物公司希音(Shein)寻求在美国上市，参议员马可·卢比奥得知后敦促美国证券交易委员会负责人，如果希音拒绝分享与中国政府关系的信息，就要阻止它上市。

“The market a Chinese company chooses to list in today is influenced by factors in addition to its fundamental business value — it’s a product of geopolitical considerations,” said Linda Yu, a U.S.-based investor who previously worked with SoftBank, the Japanese technology giant, and Warburg Pincus to invest in China.

“今天，中国公司选择在哪个市场上市，除了其基本的商业价值外，还受到其他因素的影响——这是地缘政治考虑的产物，”曾与日本科技巨头软银集团以及华平投资合作投资中国的美国投资人于丹说。

Four or five years ago, a successful Chinese company with a hold on a big market was a promising candidate to sell stock. “The question asked at the time was ‘Why haven’t you listed abroad yet?’” Ms. Yu said. “But now it has flipped to ‘Why would you?’”

四五年前，一家成功的中国公司只要手里握着一个大市场，就是一个有前途的上市公司候选。“当时你会问‘你们为什么还没有在海外上市’，”于丹说。“但现在，问题变成了‘你为什么要在海外上市’。”

Most of the Chinese companies currently listed on U.S. stock exchanges went public between 2018 and 2021, when investors scrambled for stakes in start-ups like Full Truck Alliance, whose apps connect freight customers and truck drivers, and Kanzhun, which runs a job-hunting platform.

目前在美国证券交易所上市的中国公司大多是在2018年至2021年间上市的，当时投资者争相投资满帮集团和看准科技这样的初创企业。满帮的应用程序帮货运客户和卡车司机之间建立联系，而看准科技则运营着一个求职平台。

The boom years ended midway through 2021 when the Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing went public on the New York Stock Exchange without a green light from Chinese regulators. At the time, Didi had more customers in China than Uber had in the rest of the world. Two days after it went public, authorities in China forced Didi to stop registering new users and to undergo a cybersecurity review over concerns that the listing could mean the company would have to transfer data about Chinese people to the United States.

繁荣时期于2021年中结束，当时中国的叫车公司滴滴出行在没有获得中国监管机构批准的情况下到纽约证券交易所上市。那个时候，滴滴在中国的用户数量超过了优步在世界其他地方的用户数量。上市两天后，中国当局强迫滴滴停止注册新用户，并接受网络安全审查，因为担心上市可能意味着该公司将不得不把中国人的数据转移到美国。

Within six months, Didi had taken steps to delist, or remove itself from the stock market. No Chinese company has tried such a high-profile listing on an overseas stock exchange since, and Chinese regulators have made stricter standards for companies looking to do so. This year, Alibaba called off a plan to spin off one of its business units, focused on logistics, through a Hong Kong listing.

不到六个月，滴滴就退市了。此后，没有一家中国公司尝试在海外证券交易所如此高调地上市，中国监管机构也对有意上市的公司制定了更严格的标准。今年，阿里巴巴取消了通过在香港上市剥离一个物流业务部门的计划。

Private businesses in China have long had to figure out how to operate without being crushed by the authorities.

长期以来，中国的私营企业不得不想办法避免受到当局的打压。

China’s main stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen were established in the early 1990s as part of reforms that transformed China’s economy, but public offerings were mostly limited to companies controlled by the state.

中国于20世纪90年代初在上海和深圳成立了两家主要的证券交易所，属于中国经济转型改革的一部分，但IPO主要限于国有控股公司。

Between 2011 and 2018, China had about the same number of I.P.O.s as the United States. In 2019, China launched the Star Market in Shanghai to encourage tech companies to go public there. But Chinese investors and company founders preferred to list in New York if they could.

从2011年到2018年，中国的IPO数量与美国大致相当。2019年，中国在上海证交所启动了科创板，鼓励科技公司在上海上市。但如果可以选择的话，中国投资者和公司创始人更倾向于在纽约上市。

Since Didi delisted, Beijing has made it clear that the power and the profits of China’s private industry should be directed toward the country’s push for technological self-reliance. Investment has poured into cutting-edge fields like semiconductors, artificial intelligence and data centers. In May, the government registered a $47.5 billion fund dedicated to semiconductor development, sending a signal to entrepreneurs and investors that while some industries may be riskier bets, these have the seal of approval.

自滴滴退市以来，北京方面明确表示，中国民营产业的影响力和利润应该用于推动中国在技术上的自力更生。投资涌入半导体、人工智能和数据中心等尖端领域。5月，政府注册了一个资本达3440亿元的基金，专门用于半导体发展，这向企业家和投资者发出信号，表明尽管某些行业可能存在更大风险，但它们是获得了认可的。

In April, Beijing released a plan outlining higher standards for companies that want to go public, including more disclosures and closer oversight.

今年4月，中国政府发布了一项计划，对希望上市的公司提出了更高的标准，包括更多的信息披露和更严格的监管。

At least 100 companies have withdrawn plans to list this year on exchanges in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, according to the regulator’s public records. Venture capital investment is at its lowest point in four years.

根据监管机构的公开记录，至少有100家公司撤回了今年在北京、上海和深圳上市的计划。风险投资正处于四年来的最低点。

“China’s securities regulator has been traditionally draconian when it comes to letting companies list — and this plan is even tighter,” Mr. Collier said. “A lot of companies are worried about listing in China or feel they can’t squeeze themselves through the eye of the needle.”

“中国的证券监管机构向来对公司上市非常严格，而这次的计划则更为严厉，”科利尔说。“很多公司都对于在中国上市感到担心，或者觉得自己无法满足如此苛刻的条件。”