作者：英国《金融时报》杰夫·代尔(Geoff Dyer)、吉密欧(Jamil Anderlini) 2008-12-02 选
致富光荣，邓小平曾经这样告诉中国。但也许不要太富。
To get rich is glorious, Deng Xiaoping once told China. But maybe not too rich.
黄光裕是中国最富有的人，他创立的国美(Gome)电器零售连锁店已经使他的财富增长到63亿美元。不过，过去一周他却一直没有露面。由于整个北京城到处都是黄光裕被拘的传言，而国美高管又无法解释他的下落，国美股票于上周一停牌。直到上周五晚，官方才首次透露该案细节——一份两行字的声明，称黄光裕涉嫌操纵与国美有关联的两家小公司的股价。
Huang Guangyu is the wealthiest person in the country, having built up a fortune of $6.3bn (€5bn, £4.1bn) from the Gome electronics retail chain he founded. Yet for the past week he has been missing. Gome suspended its shares on Monday as rumours of Mr Huang's arrest swirled around the capital and company officials could not explain his whereabouts. Only late on Friday evening did the authorities give the first details about the case – a two-line statement saying Mr Huang was suspected of manipulating the share price of two small companies with links to Gome.
黄光裕失踪之谜反映出中国法治的不足。中国推动市场改革已有30年，但政治关系和个人恩怨仍然常常被置于法律程序之上。它还暴露出现代中国人对财富和商业的复杂态度——人们崇拜中国新富们的活力，但在社会不平等日益扩大时，又会对他们产生怀疑。
The mystery of his disappearance does not reflect well on the rule of law in a country that has promoted market reforms for 30 years but where political connections and personal feuds still often trump legal due process. It has also exposed the complex attitude to wealth and business in modern China where the new rich are lionised for their dynamism but are also considered suspect at a time when social inequality is widening.
在这个充满了一夜暴富故事的国度，黄光裕的故事是最不寻常的之一。他出生在东南沿海城市汕头附近一个种水稻的小村庄，家里非常穷，甚至连村里的其他孩子都会嘲笑他。信奉天主教的父母讲述的关于《圣经》和在亚洲各地经商的祖辈们的故事使他受到了鼓舞。
In a country where tales of overnight fortunes abound, Mr Huang's story is one of the most remarkable. Born in a small rice-farming village near Shantou on the south-east coast, his family was so poor that even the other village kids would tease him. He was buoyed by stories from his Catholic parents about the Bible and about ancestors who had been traders throughout Asia.
16岁辍学后，他和哥哥带了几袋收音机和电池到中国北部边疆内蒙古做生意，随身只带了4000元人民币（当时约合300美元）。他们从那里来到北京，在天安门广场旁边摆了一个售货摊。当时，占据中国电器市场的是定量配给券和无数政府中间商。但黄光裕（他的粤语名字是Wong Kwong Yu）展现出了资本家的本能，他直接从广东家乡的工厂进货，然后在北京出售。
After dropping out of school at 16, he and his brother went to Inner Mongolia in the far north taking with them a few bags of radios and batteries to sell and just Rmb4,000 (about $300 at the time). From there they went to Beijing, setting up a stall near Tiananmen Square. At that time, the electronics market was dominated by ration coupons and a myriad of government middle-men. But Mr Huang (who is also known by the Cantonese version of his name, Wong Kwong Yu) showed his capitalist instincts by buying goods directly from the new factories in his Guangdong hometown and selling them in Beijing.
过去10年，国美一直处于中国经济最有利的位置。中国最近的增长主要来自高层住宅的激增，数千万中国中产阶级在国美商店为自己的新家购置电冰箱、洗衣机和电视。
For the past decade, Gome [pronounced Guo Mei] has been at the sweet spot of the Chinese economy. Much of the recent growth has come from the explosion of high-rise apartment buildings; and tens of millions of middle-class Chinese purchased the refrigerators, washing machines and televisions for their new homes in Gome stores.
现年39岁的黄光裕还成功做到了两件事，这在同代中国企业家中颇为少见。首先，他打造了一个得到广泛认可的品牌。在中国城市，红蓝相间的国美标识与麦当劳(McDonald)或耐克(Nike)一样与众不同，而且比它们更加常见。
Mr Huang, now 39, has also pulled off two tricks that only a few Chinese entrepreneurs of his generation have managed. First, he has built a widely recognised brand. In Chinese cities, the red and blue Gome logo is as distinctive and more common a sight than McDonald's or Nike.
尽管中国许多行业的特色都是数百家小公司在竞争，但黄光裕对电子电器零售行业进行了整合，收购了排名第三和第四的公司以及两家手机零售商。他的开拓性战略，应该收进哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)的案例研究。
While many industries in China feature competition between hundreds of small companies, Mr Huang has consolidated the electronics and appliances retail sector, acquiring the number three and four companies, as well as two mobile-phone retailers. His pioneering strategy merited a Harvard Business School case study.
1300家门店的规模赋予了国美减价和与供应商协商更苛刻条件（黄光裕被称作“价格屠夫”）的优势，同时增加了美国百思买(Best Buy)在中国立足的难度。黄光裕在失踪10天前接受英国《金融时报》采访时表示：“美国的销售模式不是很适合中国市场，因此我们不认为百思买是一个大的威胁。”他迟到了70分钟，但看上去很放松。
The scale that comes from 1,300 stores has allowed Gome to negotiate tougher terms with suppliers and to cut prices (he is known as the “price butcher”). It also made it harder for Best Buy to get a foothold in the Chinese market. “The US sales model does not fit the Chinese market well, so we do not see Best Buy as a big threat,” he said in an interview with the FT only 10 days before his disappearance. He was an hour and 10 minutes late, but seemed relaxed.
不过，随着中国经济放缓，投资者开始质疑黄光裕的模式。国美拥有大量来自供应商的短期信贷，而这种信贷正变得越来越稀缺。房地产市场滑坡打击了公司销售额，国美股价今年已下跌77%。
Yet as the Chinese economy slows, investors have begun to question the model. Gome has large amounts of short-term credit from suppliers, which is becoming scarcer. The housing slump is hitting sales and Gome's shares have already fallen 77 per cent this year.
黄光裕的故事在中国家喻户晓，但他一直比较低调。他几年前接受英国《金融时报》采访时曾表示，除了工作及在家陪妻子和两个女儿看电视，他很少干别的。他住在北京东郊一个叫做北京高尔夫公寓(Beijing Golf Palace)的普通住宅区内，但他实际上并不打高尔夫。
Mr Huang's story is well-known in China but he keeps a relatively low-profile. In an interview with the FT several years ago, he said he did little but work and watch television at home with his wife and two daughters. He lives in a nondescript housing complex called Beijing Golf Palace in the city's eastern suburbs but does not actually play golf.
从外表上看，黄光裕是一个说话温和、抽烟不断的人。他不说行话，但给人的印象却是非常聪明、警觉，对于自己对中国市场的见解非常自信。许多人现在提出，中国消费者将开始大量借贷，尤其是在农村地区，他对此不以为然。他说：“中国的老百姓就是对大量借债感到不舒服。”
In person, Mr Huang speaks softly and chain-smokes. He shuns jargon, but comes across as very smart, alert and deeply confident about his understanding of the Chinese market, sneering at suggestions – quite common at the moment – that Chinese consumers are going to start taking on a lot of credit, especially in rural areas. “Ordinary people in China simply do not feel comfortable borrowing a lot of money,” he said.
他非常喜欢金色领带，头发总是整洁地往后梳（除了去年有一段时间剃了光头外），不过，他的一位前助理表示，黄光裕不愿在公众场合露面，因为他对自己缺乏正式教育感到难为情。与中国的许多商人不同，黄光裕没有加入中国共产党或中国政体中的其它团体。他曾经告诉英国《金融时报》：“即使我想入党，我认为自己也不合格，因为我是一个天主教徒。我的家庭有长期的天主教传统，已经有好几代了。”
He has a penchant for gold ties and slicks his hair back (except for a period last year when he shaved it off completely), but one former associate says he avoids public appearances because he is self-conscious about his lack of formal education. Unlike many of his business peers, Mr Huang has not joined the Chinese Communist party or other parts of the political establishment. “Even if I wanted to join the party, I do not think I would be qualified because I am a Catholic,” he once told the FT. “My family has a long Catholic tradition which dates back generations.”
黄光裕到底在多大程度上是一个政治局外人，已变成一个重要问题。如今的中国人谈论“原罪”，尽管并不是以天主教徒所熟悉的方式。人们普遍认为，任何一个成功的商业人士，都必定在某个阶段“走过捷径”。许多商业人士建立了深厚的政治关系网，以防他们早期的交易遭到调查。一位长期观察中国政治体系的人士表示：“由于几乎每个有钱有权的人都有一些事情需要隐瞒，因此腐败调查在很大程度上是一种政治斗争的形式。”
Just how much of a political outsider Mr Huang really is has become an important issue. Chinese today talk about “original sin”, although not in a way familiar to Catholics. It is the widely held belief that anyone successful in business must at some stage have cut corners. Many business people build up deep networks of political contacts to prevent their early deals from being probed. “Since almost every rich and powerful person has something to hide, corruption investigations are largely a form of political struggle,” says one long-time observer of the Chinese political system.
黄光裕因操纵股价而被追查的消息，将令围绕其案件蓄积的紧张情绪得到一定程度的缓解，尤其是考虑到政府已将打击内幕交易列为优先解决的问题。不过，目前还没有他身在何处或是否已被正式逮捕的确切消息。中国最大公司之一的董事局主席和主要股东就这么不见了。
The news that Mr Huang is being pursued for manipulating share prices will ease some of the tension that has built up over his case, especially given that the authorities have made attacking insider trading a priority. Yet there is still no concrete information about where he is or if he has been formally arrested. The chairman and main shareholder of one of China's biggest companies has simply disappeared.
尽管产权受到了更多保护，但中国商人们还在抱怨自己在法律上的脆弱性。经济放缓加剧了这种担忧。如果黄光裕被提起公诉，政府需要证明他滥用自己的地位，而不是在其仇人的指使下才找他的麻烦。这将是对中国法律制度的一次重大可信度考验。
While property rights have been given greater protection, businessmen complain about their legal vulnerability. The slowdown has aggravated those concerns. If Mr Huang is prosecuted, the authorities will need to prove he abused his status and is not being pursued at the behest of his enemies. It will be a big credibility test for the legal system.
致富光荣，邓小平曾经这样告诉中国。但也许不要太富。
To get rich is glorious, Deng Xiaoping once told China. But maybe not too rich.
黄光裕是中国最富有的人，他创立的国美(Gome)电器零售连锁店已经使他的财富增长到63亿美元。不过，过去一周他却一直没有露面。由于整个北京城到处都是黄光裕被拘的传言，而国美高管又无法解释他的下落，国美股票于上周一停牌。直到上周五晚，官方才首次透露该案细节——一份两行字的声明，称黄光裕涉嫌操纵与国美有关联的两家小公司的股价。
Huang Guangyu is the wealthiest person in the country, having built up a fortune of $6.3bn (€5bn, £4.1bn) from the Gome electronics retail chain he founded. Yet for the past week he has been missing. Gome suspended its shares on Monday as rumours of Mr Huang's arrest swirled around the capital and company officials could not explain his whereabouts. Only late on Friday evening did the authorities give the first details about the case – a two-line statement saying Mr Huang was suspected of manipulating the share price of two small companies with links to Gome.
黄光裕失踪之谜反映出中国法治的不足。中国推动市场改革已有30年，但政治关系和个人恩怨仍然常常被置于法律程序之上。它还暴露出现代中国人对财富和商业的复杂态度——人们崇拜中国新富们的活力，但在社会不平等日益扩大时，又会对他们产生怀疑。
The mystery of his disappearance does not reflect well on the rule of law in a country that has promoted market reforms for 30 years but where political connections and personal feuds still often trump legal due process. It has also exposed the complex attitude to wealth and business in modern China where the new rich are lionised for their dynamism but are also considered suspect at a time when social inequality is widening.
在这个充满了一夜暴富故事的国度，黄光裕的故事是最不寻常的之一。他出生在东南沿海城市汕头附近一个种水稻的小村庄，家里非常穷，甚至连村里的其他孩子都会嘲笑他。信奉天主教的父母讲述的关于《圣经》和在亚洲各地经商的祖辈们的故事使他受到了鼓舞。
In a country where tales of overnight fortunes abound, Mr Huang's story is one of the most remarkable. Born in a small rice-farming village near Shantou on the south-east coast, his family was so poor that even the other village kids would tease him. He was buoyed by stories from his Catholic parents about the Bible and about ancestors who had been traders throughout Asia.
16岁辍学后，他和哥哥带了几袋收音机和电池到中国北部边疆内蒙古做生意，随身只带了4000元人民币（当时约合300美元）。他们从那里来到北京，在天安门广场旁边摆了一个售货摊。当时，占据中国电器市场的是定量配给券和无数政府中间商。但黄光裕（他的粤语名字是Wong Kwong Yu）展现出了资本家的本能，他直接从广东家乡的工厂进货，然后在北京出售。
After dropping out of school at 16, he and his brother went to Inner Mongolia in the far north taking with them a few bags of radios and batteries to sell and just Rmb4,000 (about $300 at the time). From there they went to Beijing, setting up a stall near Tiananmen Square. At that time, the electronics market was dominated by ration coupons and a myriad of government middle-men. But Mr Huang (who is also known by the Cantonese version of his name, Wong Kwong Yu) showed his capitalist instincts by buying goods directly from the new factories in his Guangdong hometown and selling them in Beijing.
过去10年，国美一直处于中国经济最有利的位置。中国最近的增长主要来自高层住宅的激增，数千万中国中产阶级在国美商店为自己的新家购置电冰箱、洗衣机和电视。
For the past decade, Gome [pronounced Guo Mei] has been at the sweet spot of the Chinese economy. Much of the recent growth has come from the explosion of high-rise apartment buildings; and tens of millions of middle-class Chinese purchased the refrigerators, washing machines and televisions for their new homes in Gome stores.
现年39岁的黄光裕还成功做到了两件事，这在同代中国企业家中颇为少见。首先，他打造了一个得到广泛认可的品牌。在中国城市，红蓝相间的国美标识与麦当劳(McDonald)或耐克(Nike)一样与众不同，而且比它们更加常见。
Mr Huang, now 39, has also pulled off two tricks that only a few Chinese entrepreneurs of his generation have managed. First, he has built a widely recognised brand. In Chinese cities, the red and blue Gome logo is as distinctive and more common a sight than McDonald's or Nike.
尽管中国许多行业的特色都是数百家小公司在竞争，但黄光裕对电子电器零售行业进行了整合，收购了排名第三和第四的公司以及两家手机零售商。他的开拓性战略，应该收进哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)的案例研究。
While many industries in China feature competition between hundreds of small companies, Mr Huang has consolidated the electronics and appliances retail sector, acquiring the number three and four companies, as well as two mobile-phone retailers. His pioneering strategy merited a Harvard Business School case study.
1300家门店的规模赋予了国美减价和与供应商协商更苛刻条件（黄光裕被称作“价格屠夫”）的优势，同时增加了美国百思买(Best Buy)在中国立足的难度。黄光裕在失踪10天前接受英国《金融时报》采访时表示：“美国的销售模式不是很适合中国市场，因此我们不认为百思买是一个大的威胁。”他迟到了70分钟，但看上去很放松。
The scale that comes from 1,300 stores has allowed Gome to negotiate tougher terms with suppliers and to cut prices (he is known as the “price butcher”). It also made it harder for Best Buy to get a foothold in the Chinese market. “The US sales model does not fit the Chinese market well, so we do not see Best Buy as a big threat,” he said in an interview with the FT only 10 days before his disappearance. He was an hour and 10 minutes late, but seemed relaxed.
不过，随着中国经济放缓，投资者开始质疑黄光裕的模式。国美拥有大量来自供应商的短期信贷，而这种信贷正变得越来越稀缺。房地产市场滑坡打击了公司销售额，国美股价今年已下跌77%。
Yet as the Chinese economy slows, investors have begun to question the model. Gome has large amounts of short-term credit from suppliers, which is becoming scarcer. The housing slump is hitting sales and Gome's shares have already fallen 77 per cent this year.
黄光裕的故事在中国家喻户晓，但他一直比较低调。他几年前接受英国《金融时报》采访时曾表示，除了工作及在家陪妻子和两个女儿看电视，他很少干别的。他住在北京东郊一个叫做北京高尔夫公寓(Beijing Golf Palace)的普通住宅区内，但他实际上并不打高尔夫。
Mr Huang's story is well-known in China but he keeps a relatively low-profile. In an interview with the FT several years ago, he said he did little but work and watch television at home with his wife and two daughters. He lives in a nondescript housing complex called Beijing Golf Palace in the city's eastern suburbs but does not actually play golf.
从外表上看，黄光裕是一个说话温和、抽烟不断的人。他不说行话，但给人的印象却是非常聪明、警觉，对于自己对中国市场的见解非常自信。许多人现在提出，中国消费者将开始大量借贷，尤其是在农村地区，他对此不以为然。他说：“中国的老百姓就是对大量借债感到不舒服。”
In person, Mr Huang speaks softly and chain-smokes. He shuns jargon, but comes across as very smart, alert and deeply confident about his understanding of the Chinese market, sneering at suggestions – quite common at the moment – that Chinese consumers are going to start taking on a lot of credit, especially in rural areas. “Ordinary people in China simply do not feel comfortable borrowing a lot of money,” he said.
他非常喜欢金色领带，头发总是整洁地往后梳（除了去年有一段时间剃了光头外），不过，他的一位前助理表示，黄光裕不愿在公众场合露面，因为他对自己缺乏正式教育感到难为情。与中国的许多商人不同，黄光裕没有加入中国共产党或中国政体中的其它团体。他曾经告诉英国《金融时报》：“即使我想入党，我认为自己也不合格，因为我是一个天主教徒。我的家庭有长期的天主教传统，已经有好几代了。”
He has a penchant for gold ties and slicks his hair back (except for a period last year when he shaved it off completely), but one former associate says he avoids public appearances because he is self-conscious about his lack of formal education. Unlike many of his business peers, Mr Huang has not joined the Chinese Communist party or other parts of the political establishment. “Even if I wanted to join the party, I do not think I would be qualified because I am a Catholic,” he once told the FT. “My family has a long Catholic tradition which dates back generations.”
黄光裕到底在多大程度上是一个政治局外人，已变成一个重要问题。如今的中国人谈论“原罪”，尽管并不是以天主教徒所熟悉的方式。人们普遍认为，任何一个成功的商业人士，都必定在某个阶段“走过捷径”。许多商业人士建立了深厚的政治关系网，以防他们早期的交易遭到调查。一位长期观察中国政治体系的人士表示：“由于几乎每个有钱有权的人都有一些事情需要隐瞒，因此腐败调查在很大程度上是一种政治斗争的形式。”
Just how much of a political outsider Mr Huang really is has become an important issue. Chinese today talk about “original sin”, although not in a way familiar to Catholics. It is the widely held belief that anyone successful in business must at some stage have cut corners. Many business people build up deep networks of political contacts to prevent their early deals from being probed. “Since almost every rich and powerful person has something to hide, corruption investigations are largely a form of political struggle,” says one long-time observer of the Chinese political system.
黄光裕因操纵股价而被追查的消息，将令围绕其案件蓄积的紧张情绪得到一定程度的缓解，尤其是考虑到政府已将打击内幕交易列为优先解决的问题。不过，目前还没有他身在何处或是否已被正式逮捕的确切消息。中国最大公司之一的董事局主席和主要股东就这么不见了。
The news that Mr Huang is being pursued for manipulating share prices will ease some of the tension that has built up over his case, especially given that the authorities have made attacking insider trading a priority. Yet there is still no concrete information about where he is or if he has been formally arrested. The chairman and main shareholder of one of China's biggest companies has simply disappeared.
尽管产权受到了更多保护，但中国商人们还在抱怨自己在法律上的脆弱性。经济放缓加剧了这种担忧。如果黄光裕被提起公诉，政府需要证明他滥用自己的地位，而不是在其仇人的指使下才找他的麻烦。这将是对中国法律制度的一次重大可信度考验。
While property rights have been given greater protection, businessmen complain about their legal vulnerability. The slowdown has aggravated those concerns. If Mr Huang is prosecuted, the authorities will need to prove he abused his status and is not being pursued at the behest of his enemies. It will be a big credibility test for the legal system.
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