特朗普VS香港财团 咆哮狂人的商战败绩

Donald J. Trump, who has made reversing America’s trade imbalance a pillar of his campaign, often portrays himself as uniquely capable of wringing concessions out of China through hard-nosed business tactics he has honed over the years.

把扭转美国的贸易逆差作为竞选支柱的唐纳德·J·特朗普(Donald J. Trump)常把自己说成具有独一无二的能力，可以用多年磨练出来的精明的经营策略迫使中国让步。

In fact, he says, he has a personal track record to back up his boasts.

事实上，他说他的个人业绩记录可以支持自己的夸耀。

“I beat China all the time,” Mr. Trump declared in a speech the day he announced his candidacy. “I own a big chunk of the Bank of America building at 1290 Avenue of the Americas that I got from China in a war. Very valuable.”

“中国一直都是我的手下败将，”特朗普在宣布参选的当天发表讲话时说。“我拥有美洲大道1290号美国银行(Bank of America)大楼的很大一部分股份，那就是我在一场大战中从中国手里夺过来的，非常值钱。”

Mr. Trump does have an investment in the building, an office tower near Rockefeller Center. But court documents and interviews with people involved in the deal tell a very different story of how he ended up with it.

特朗普的确投资了位于洛克菲勒中心(Rockefeller Center)附近的这栋办公楼。但关于他最终是如何拿到那些股份的，法庭文件和对参与该交易的人士进行的采访为我们呈现出了一个截然不同的故事。

It began when a group of Hong Kong billionaires, including one who has been called the Donald Trump of China, helped rescue Mr. Trump from the verge of bankruptcy by investing in one of his properties in Manhattan.

一开始，香港的一群亿万富翁投资了特朗普在曼哈顿的一个房地产项目，帮助拯救了濒临破产的特朗普。在那群香港富豪中，有一人被称作中国的特朗普。

For years, the carefully cultivated relationship between Mr. Trump and his Hong Kong partners proved lucrative for both sides, and stands out as perhaps the closest that Mr. Trump has come to international diplomacy.

此后多年，特朗普小心翼翼地培育着和香港合作伙伴之间的关系。事实证明，这种关系对双方都有利，而且其中有一点吸引了人们的目光，因为它或许是特朗普的经历里最接近国际外交的东西。

To strike the deal, Mr. Trump had to attend elaborate dinner parties featuring foreign foods he did not want to eat. He delayed the closing because of Chinese spiritual beliefs and hunted around New York for a “feng shui” master to help with the building décor, instead of indulging his tastes for marble and gold, according to former associates of Mr. Trump who were involved in the deal.

为了达成协议，特朗普不得不参加精心安排的宴会。那些宴会上主要是他不想吃的外国餐食。据曾参与该交易的特朗普的前同事称，他因为中国人的精神信仰而推迟完成交易的时间，并在纽约四处寻找风水大师帮忙确定大楼的装饰，而不是尽情展现自己的对大理石和金色的偏爱。

But when his Hong Kong partners sold the property without his support, Mr. Trump waged a bitter, long-shot legal battle against them. And far from winning his share of the Bank of America building, according to court documents, he had to settle for it after losing in court. In the end, Mr. Trump’s alliance and eventual rivalry with some of Hong Kong’s richest men proved to be a tale of Mr. Trump at the extremes. It showcased his unflagging confidence in his ability to turn a bad financial situation around. But it also underscored his willingness to destroy a fruitful relationship with aggressive litigation.

但当香港合伙人在未得到他的支持下卖掉那处房产时，特朗普向他们提起了一场获胜几率渺茫、且充斥敌意的诉讼。法庭文件显示，他在美国银行大厦的股份并不是胜诉赢来的，而是败诉后不得不勉强接受这样的安排。特朗普与香港部分顶级富豪结成的同盟到头来变成了对抗。这个故事最终证明了特朗普的极端之处。它即表明了他永远相信自己能够扭转糟糕的财务状况，也突显了他愿意用一场强硬的诉讼来摧毁一段富有成果的合作关系。

Their partnership began in 1994, after the collapse of the real estate market left Mr. Trump deeply in debt. He could not afford to make the bank payments on a 77-acre swath of land near Lincoln Center known as Riverside South, let alone to develop the property.

他们的合作始于1994年。当时，房地产市场崩盘导致特朗普债台高筑。他无力支付林肯中心(Lincoln Center)旁边那个狭长地块的银行款项，更别说开发那个项目了。该地块名为河滨南(Riverside South)，占地77英亩。

In need of cash, he agreed to meet with intermediaries from a consortium of Hong Kong billionaires who were willing to buy the land, assume Mr. Trump’s debts and pay him 30 percent of the profits, as well as fees for helping to manage the development of the site, which they agreed to finance. It was by far the best offer he received. The group included Henry Cheng Kar-shun, one of the world’s richest developers, and Vincent Lo, who is Mr. Trump’s Chinese counterpart in more ways than one.

急需资金的特朗普同意与一个由香港富豪组成的财团的中间人见面。香港的富豪同意买下那快地、承担特朗普的债务并分给他30%的利润，还会出钱请他帮忙管理现场的开发。他们同意为开发该项目提供资金。那是他当时收到的最好要约，远超其他方面提出的条件。香港财团中包括全世界最富有的房地产开发商之一郑家纯(Henry Cheng Kar-Shun)和罗康瑞(Vincent Lo)，后者在很多方面都堪称中国的特朗普。

Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Lo comes from a wealthy family. He is well known for creating a hip restaurant area in Shanghai called Xintiandi, or “new heaven on earth,” an upscale brand he has replicated across China. His life has been chronicled by tabloids and society pages, especially his divorce from his first wife and his marriage to a beauty pageant winner, Miss Hong Kong of 1977.

和特朗普一样，罗康瑞也出身富裕家庭。他因为在上海创立了一个名叫新天地的流行餐饮区而声名远扬。后来，他将新天地这个高档品牌复制到了中国各地。他的生活被小报和其他报纸的八卦版块大肆报道，尤其是他与第一任妻子离婚并迎娶1977年的香港小姐冠军的事情。

Despite their similarities, Mr. Trump hesitated when he received an invitation to travel to Hong Kong to negotiate the deal. He does not like to travel, and he feared that negotiating on the Hong Kong developers’ turf would put him at a disadvantage and make him appear weak, said Abe Wallach, Mr. Trump’s executive vice president of acquisitions and finance at the time.

尽管有诸多相似之处，但特朗普在收到去香港商谈交易的邀请时仍有些犹豫。当时负责为特朗普处理收购和财务事务的执行副总裁阿贝·沃勒克(Abe Wallach)说，特朗普不喜欢远行，并且害怕在香港开发商的地盘上谈判会使自己处于不利地位，让自己显得软弱。

But face-to-face meetings are crucial in Chinese business culture, where personal bonds and political connections, collectively known as guanxi, are relied upon to avoid and resolve business disputes, sometimes more than the legal system. Eventually, Mr. Trump’s aides convinced him that he had to make the trip.

但进行面对面的会谈在中国的商业文化中至关重要。在这种文化中，要依靠统称关系的人脉和政治关系来避免和解决商业纠纷，它们有时候比法律制度更重要。最终，特朗普的助手让他相信，他必须得去。

In Hong Kong, the golf games, dinner parties and intensive talks featured the awkwardness and cultural miscues that can crop up in any high-stakes international negotiation. Mr. Lo and Mr. Cheng invited Mr. Trump to play golf, but Mr. Trump was appalled when they told him they usually bet more than $1,000 on each hole. They ended up betting $100 per hole, and Mr. Trump wound up losing more than he won, Mr. Lo recalled in an interview this month.

在香港，高尔夫球比赛、宴会和密集的谈判期间出现了所有事关重大的跨国谈判都可能会出现的尴尬时刻和文化误会。罗康瑞和郑家纯邀请特朗普去打高尔夫，但得知他们每一洞的赌注通常都高于1000美元时，特朗普感到难以接受。罗康瑞本月接受采访时回忆说，最终每一洞的赌注是100美元，特朗普后来输的比赢的要多。

“He’s a good golfer, but we had the local knowledge — he probably was jet-lagged,” Mr. Lo said.

“他高尔夫打得不错，但我们对场地比较熟悉，他可能也因为长途旅行而感到疲劳，”罗康瑞说。

Mr. Lo and Mr. Cheng invited Mr. Trump to dinner at the home of Mr. Cheng’s father, an uncommon honor in Chinese culture. But the evening was a trying experience for Mr. Trump.

罗康瑞和郑家纯还邀请特朗普去郑家纯父亲的家里吃饭。在中国文化中，这是一种难得的荣幸。但对特朗普来说，那天晚上非常难熬。

“He didn’t like the food, and couldn’t use chopsticks,” recalled Mr. Wallach, who was there. “The first course was a whole fish, with the head still on. You could see the face of the fish and the teeth, which really looked grotesque. The servant put the fish in front of Donald. Donald said, ‘The honor belongs to Abe.’ I took my chopsticks and began to pick at it.”

“他不喜欢桌上的食物，也不会用筷子，”当时同在现场的沃勒克说。“第一道菜是一整条鱼，没有去头。能看到鱼的脸和牙齿，看上去真的很难看。佣人把鱼放在特朗普面前。特朗普说，‘这份荣誉属于阿贝。’于是我便拿起筷子开始夹鱼肉。”

Mr. Cheng and Mr. Lo also half-jokingly proposed an informal drinking contest, which Mr. Trump, a teetotaler, declined.

郑家纯和罗康瑞还半开玩笑地提议进行一场非正式的喝酒比赛，但被滴酒不沾的特朗普拒绝了。

The Hong Kong partners were wary of Mr. Trump’s well-earned reputation for litigiousness. But for more than a decade, Mr. Trump avoided conflict with them. Indeed, he often deferred to them. Chase Manhattan Bank, which held Mr. Trump’s mortgage, initially scheduled the closing of the deal during China’s Ghost Month, during which some believe the spirits of the dead roam the earth.

特朗普爱打官司的名声得来不虚，香港的合作伙伴对此颇为警惕。但在十多年里，特朗普避免与他们发生冲突。事实上，他经常听从他们的意见。持有特朗普的抵押贷款资产的大通曼哈顿银行(Chase Manhattan Bank)最初安排在中国鬼月期间完成交易。一些人认为，亡者的灵魂会在鬼月回到人间。

“The Chinese told me that we would have to wait until after the fifteenth of September to close the deal,” Mr. Wallach wrote in a chapter of an unpublished book he is writing about his years with Mr. Trump. “Trump went apoplectic.” But he said that Mr. Trump went along.

“中国人对我说，我们得等到9月15日以后才能完成交易，”沃勒克在尚未出版的一本著作的其中一章中写道。他正在写的这本书回顾了他追随特朗普的那些年。“特朗普怒不可遏。”但他说特朗普最后还是同意了。

(Mr. Lo said that any delay had been caused by a need to complete paperwork, and that he and his business partners were not superstitious.)

（罗康瑞称延迟都是因为需要备齐全部文件，并表示他和他的生意伙伴并不迷信。）

The project proved extremely profitable, as the New York real estate market rebounded. In 2005, the Hong Kong partners sold the development for $1.76 billion. Although it was believed to be the largest residential real estate transaction in the city’s history, Mr. Trump was furious, and contends to this day that his partners did not consult him first.

随着纽约房地产市场的复苏，这个项目被证明利润非常丰厚。2005年，香港的合伙人以17.6亿美元的价格将项目出手。尽管当时被认为是该市历史上最大的住宅类房地产交易，特朗普依然很愤怒，并且至今坚称合作伙伴没有先咨询他的意见。

“I said: ‘Why didn’t you come talk to me? Whatever price you got, I could have gotten more money,’” Mr. Trump recalled in an interview this month.

“我说：‘你们为什么不告诉我？不管你们卖了多少钱，我都会拿到更好的价格，’”特朗普本月接受采访时说。

Mr. Lo said that Mr. Trump had been informed of the decision, and that in any case it would have been very hard to shop such a large property around without Mr. Trump’s becoming aware of it.

罗康瑞称特朗普知道相关决定，并表示无论如何，要在特朗普不知道的情况下为这么大一处产业寻找买家是非常困难的。

Instead of accepting his share of the proceeds, Mr. Trump sued his partners for “staggering breach” of fiduciary duty in a lawsuit that demanded $1 billion in damages. Mr. Lo, who felt that Mr. Trump should have been appreciative of the deal he had received, called the lawsuit “a shock.”

特朗普没有接受自己应得的那一份收益，而是提起诉讼，控告合作伙伴“严重违反受信义务”，要求获得10亿美元的损害赔偿。罗康瑞觉得特朗普应该对自己拿到的交易心存感谢，称对诉讼“感到震惊”。

And when the Hong Kong partners sought to invest the proceeds from the sale in Bank of America buildings in San Francisco and New York, Mr. Trump sought an injunction to scuttle the deal.

当香港的合作伙伴寻求用出售美国银行大楼得到的收益在旧金山和纽约投资时，特朗普申请了强制令，进行阻挠。

The judge ruled against him. Instead of receiving the cash he wanted, Mr. Trump had to accept a 30 percent share in the profits from the two Bank of America buildings, tied up in a partnership that is slated to last until 2044. But today, Mr. Trump counts that legal defeat as a victory.

法官裁定特朗普败诉。没有如愿拿到钱的他，不得不接受两栋美国银行大楼所产生利润的30%。这笔钱被拴在了一种合作运营中。该合作关系将持续到2044年。但如今，特朗普称那次败诉是一场胜利。

“Through more luck than talent, I ended up much better because the buildings have increased in value,” he said. “In the end, it was fine.”

“更多的是凭借运气而非天赋，我到最后的结果好多了，因为两栋楼升值了，”他说。“最后挺好的。”

Nonetheless, Mr. Trump’s litigation over Riverside South dragged on for at least four years. He forced his partners to produce more than 166,000 pages of documents in court and accused them of various transgressions, including fraud and tax evasion.

然而，特朗普河滨南那场官司持续了至少四年。他迫使合作伙伴在法庭上出示了超过16.6万页文件，并指控他们有多种不当行为，包括诈骗和逃税。

During the litigation, Mr. Lo was forced to keep his trips to the United States secret, out of concern that Mr. Trump’s lawyers would serve him with court papers that would force him to remain in the United States.

诉讼期间，罗康瑞被迫对自己去美国保密，因为担心特朗普的律师会给他拿来强迫他留在美国的法庭文件。

Outside court, Mr. Trump’s battle seemed to take the shape of a personal rivalry with Mr. Lo, who had just bankrolled a Chinese reality television show called “Wise Man Takes All.” It loosely resembled Mr. Trump’s show “The Apprentice,” although Mr. Lo appeared just once on the show and handed out start-up capital to the winners instead of jobs.

法庭外，特朗普的战斗，似乎是以和罗康瑞进行个人之间的较量这种形式进行的。罗康瑞赞助了中国一档名为《创智赢家》的电视真人秀节目。它和特朗普的《学徒》(The Apprentice)大致类似，不过罗康瑞只在节目上出现了一次。他提供给获胜者的是创业资金而非工作机会。

Mr. Trump announced that he was going to take a version of “The Apprentice” to China to compete with Mr. Lo’s show, although Mr. Trump’s show there does not appear to have gotten off the ground. In an interview, Mr. Trump asked a reporter how Mr. Lo’s show had turned out, then answered his question: “Let’s put it this way. It wasn’t ‘The Apprentice,’ which was a big success.”

特朗普曾宣称，他将在中国推出另一个版本的《学徒》，与罗康瑞的节目竞争，不过特朗普的新节目似乎尚未启动。在一次采访中，特朗普先向记者询问了罗康瑞的节目情况如何，然后才回答了对方的问题：这么说吧，它跟取得了巨大成功的《学徒》不一样。”

Mr. Lo said his show had met his real goal of promoting entrepreneurship in China.

罗康瑞说其节目的真正目的是推广创业精神，该目的已经达到。

After the lawsuit, the Hong Kong partners moved swiftly to cut all ties to Mr. Trump. Mr. Lo sold his shares in the partnership to the Cheng family, which sold to Vornado Realty Trust, now the owner of a 70 percent interest in the Bank of America buildings.

那场官司之后，特朗普的香港合作伙伴们迅速斩断了与他的所有关系。罗康瑞将其在合伙公司的股份卖给了郑氏家族，郑氏家族又将股份卖给了沃那多房产信托（Vornado Realty Trust，简称VNO)，目前VNO持有美国银行大楼70%的股份。

But in the interview, Mr. Trump sounded almost wistful about his former partners, marveling at the money they had made together and at the fact that they no longer spoke. He acknowledged that his former partners might have gotten the best deal possible on Riverside South, after all.

但在接受采访时，特朗普几乎是在以怀念的语气谈论从前的合作伙伴，惊叹于他们一起赚过多少钱，以及他们已经不再搭理彼此这个事实。他最终承认，前合作伙伴或许是以最好的价钱出售了河滨南。

“It’s too bad that this happened,” Mr. Trump told a reporter.

“发生这种事真是太糟糕了，”特朗普告诉一位记者。

“If you speak to Vincent and Henry, tell them I think they are fantastic people,” he said. “You let them know that Donald Trump has great respect for them, O.K.?”

“如果遇到罗先生和郑先生，请告诉他们我认为他们都是很好的人，”他说。“请让他们知道，唐纳德·特朗普非常尊敬他们。”

Eight thousand miles away, in his penthouse office in Hong Kong, Mr. Lo laughed when told of Mr. Trump’s comment. He made clear that he had not forgotten being sued for $1 billion.

8000英里外的香港，罗康瑞在其位于顶楼的办公室里听说特朗普的评论后笑了起来。他明确表示还没忘记曾遭起诉索偿10亿美元。

“Well, that’s him,” Mr. Lo said. “To file a lawsuit is nothing. It’s just like having lunch.”

“是啊，他就是这样一个人，”罗康瑞说。“打官司就跟吃午饭差不多，根本不算什么。”