While it is true that surging M2 can reflect excessive leverage, it is not a particularly accurate gauge in China, where commercial banks can easily circumvent high reserve requirements and quantitative controls by moving loans off their balance sheets to wealth-management products – practices that fuel artificial credit expansion that looks like M2 growth. In this sense, it is the Chinese monetary authorities’ reluctance to open up the formal financial sector to domestic private capital, or to liberalize the deposit rate, that is fueling the expansion of shadow banking.
诚然，M2的飙涨可能反映了过高的杠杆，但这在中国并不是一个特别准确标尺。中国的商业银行可以轻松地规避高储备金要求和量化控制手段，只要将它们的贷款从资产负债表移到理财产品即可——如此形成的人为信用扩张与M2增长十分接近。照此看，助长影子银行扩张的恰恰是中国货币当局不愿向国内私人资本放开正式银行部门和实施存款利率自由化。