中国富商在投资什么？担忧什么？

当投资者担心经济增速放缓的时候，手中的资金该何去何从？

45岁的张玉辉（音译）穿着一双舒适的系带黑鞋，脸上带着销售人员惯有的笑容，接受了《财富》杂志的采访。自上世纪90年代以来，张玉辉就一直在做钢材生意，销售家乡哈尔滨生产的工业器械特种钢材。如今，张先生早已成家，并育有一子，成为人们眼中典型的中国富商。

但是，他和身边的朋友们一样，开始对经济增速放缓充满了担忧。

张先生的公司2011年业绩最为辉煌，营业额达到8000万美元。当时，形势一片大好，仿佛中国经济能永远保持10%的增长。他回忆说，正是因为有这样的预期，他的一些朋友从银行贷了巨款。然而，今年工业持续衰退，尤其是被称为“生锈地带”的东北三省，因此，张先生的期望值已降低至5000万美元的营业额，而他那些朋友早就已经拖欠银行贷款了。

与大多数中国人一样，张先生的主要投资领域是房地产。他没有存款，而且自2000年最后一次炒股之后就不再信任股市。在2005年左右，张先生花40万美元在哈尔滨购买了第一套房产，那时，人们可以很容易就用房产做抵押，然后再贷款买更多房子。他目前拥有两栋别墅、三家商铺和五套住房，总价值约1250万美元。然而，过去两年，哈尔滨房地产市场的跌幅超过10%，虽然他财务状况还算理想，但“银行已经准备提前收回贷款。”他说，“很多人都很担心。其实，我又何尝不是如此。”

他已经出售了几处地产，但仍没有想好卖来的钱如何处理，现在全是握在手里的现金。他说，“股市可以考虑”，因为股市已经从今年夏天的低谷开始反弹，这多少带来一些信心；或者，他也可以投资比较“稳健”的美国和英国的房地产，但中国有资本管制，每年向外国转移的资金不能超过5万美元。“绕过管制的方法多的是”，他说道。

他并不看好公司的业务前景。张先生说：“造船行业很不景气，汽车行业几乎已经见顶。未来几年内，高铁倒是有可能有所增长。”

因此，他把赌注押在了消费服务领域。张先生最近在哈尔滨开了一家普洱茶馆，顾客喝一次茶的消费超过100美元，而普洱茶每盎司的价格甚至已经超过了白银。他认为，中国各地的老百姓都越来越有钱，到哈尔滨旅游的人因此也会增加。他不希望错过中国的下一个投资趋势——消费热潮。（财富中文网）

译者：冯丰

校对：夏林

Where do you park your money if you’re worried about a slowdown?

Zhang Yuhui wears the comfortable black lace-up shoes and permanent smile of a salesman. Since the ’90s, he’s run his own steel-trading business. It sells the specialized varieties used in industrial machines from his hometown, Harbin, a provincial capital in China’s north, built by Russians, whose skyline still sports the spiraled onion domes of an earlier time. Zhang is 45 and married, has a son, and, like his friends, is fretting about an economic slowdown. In other words, he is a typical wealthy Chinese investor.

Zhang’s company’s revenue peaked at around $80 million in 2011, when it looked as if China’s economy would grow at 10% a year forever. He says his friends took out large bank loans on that assumption. This year, with the industrial sector in recession, especially in the northern provinces known as China’s Rustbelt, Zhang is hoping his revenue reaches $50 million. His friends have defaulted on their loans.

Like most Chinese, Zhang’s chief investment is real estate. He doesn’t have a savings account and hasn’t trusted the stock market since he last owned shares, in 2000. Back in the mid-2000s, after Zhang spent $400,000 on his first building in Harbin, it was easy to borrow against it for money to buy more. He now owns two villas, three shops, and five homes, worth about $12.5 million. But real estate prices have declined by double-digit percentages over the past two years in Harbin. “Now the bank is calling all the loans,” he says, and while his own finances are in good shape, “a lot of people are worried. To be honest, I worry like many people.”

He has already sold a few properties and is undecided about what to do with the proceeds, which he’s holding in cash. “The stock market is one choice,” he says, explaining that he has been encouraged by its rebound from summer lows. Or there’s real estate in the U.S. and U.K., which he calls “stable.” And China’s capital controls, which restrict moving more than $50,000 abroad a year? “There are many ways around it,” he says.

He’s glum about his own business’s prospects. “The shipbuilding industry is bad,” Zhang says. “The auto industry has almost peaked. Maybe high-speed rail will grow in the next few years.”

So he’s making his next bet on consumer services. He recently opened a tea shop in Harbin that sells pu-erh tea (more expensive, ounce for ounce, than silver) for more than $100 a sitting. Domestic tourism to his cold northern city will grow, he says; besides, people across China are still getting richer. Zhang says he doesn’t want to miss China’s next investing trend—a consumer boom.