特朗普VS香港財團 咆哮狂人的商戰敗績

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.

把扭轉美國的貿易逆差作爲競選支柱的唐納德·J·特朗普(Donald J. Trump)常把自己說成具有獨一無二的能力，可以用多年磨練出來的精明的經營策略迫使中國讓步。

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

事實上，他說他的個人業績記錄可以支持自己的誇耀。

“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.”

“中國一直都是我的手下敗將，”特朗普在宣佈參選的當天發表講話時說。“我擁有美洲大道1290號美國銀行(Bank of America)大樓的很大一部分股份，那就是我在一場大戰中從中國手裏奪過來的，非常值錢。”

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.

特朗普的確投資了位於洛克菲勒中心(Rockefeller Center)附近的這棟辦公樓。但關於他最終是如何拿到那些股份的，法庭文件和對參與該交易的人士進行的採訪爲我們呈現出了一個截然不同的故事。

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.

一開始，香港的一羣億萬富翁投資了特朗普在曼哈頓的一個房地產項目，幫助拯救了瀕臨破產的特朗普。在那羣香港富豪中，有一人被稱作中國的特朗普。

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.

此後多年，特朗普小心翼翼地培育着和香港合作伙伴之間的關係。事實證明，這種關係對雙方都有利，而且其中有一點吸引了人們的目光，因爲它或許是特朗普的經歷裏最接近國際外交的東西。

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.

爲了達成協議，特朗普不得不參加精心安排的宴會。那些宴會上主要是他不想吃的外國餐食。據曾參與該交易的特朗普的前同事稱，他因爲中國人的精神信仰而推遲完成交易的時間，並在紐約四處尋找風水大師幫忙確定大樓的裝飾，而不是盡情展現自己的對大理石和金色的偏愛。

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.

但當香港合夥人在未得到他的支持下賣掉那處房產時，特朗普向他們提起了一場獲勝機率渺茫、且充斥敵意的訴訟。法庭文件顯示，他在美國銀行大廈的股份並不是勝訴贏來的，而是敗訴後不得不勉強接受這樣的安排。特朗普與香港部分頂級富豪結成的同盟到頭來變成了對抗。這個故事最終證明了特朗普的極端之處。它即表明了他永遠相信自己能夠扭轉糟糕的財務狀況，也突顯了他願意用一場強硬的訴訟來摧毀一段富有成果的合作關係。

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.

他們的合作始於1994年。當時，房地產市場崩盤導致特朗普債臺高築。他無力支付林肯中心(Lincoln Center)旁邊那個狹長地塊的銀行款項，更別說開發那個項目了。該地塊名爲河濱南(Riverside South)，佔地77英畝。

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.

急需資金的特朗普同意與一個由香港富豪組成的財團的中間人見面。香港的富豪同意買下那快地、承擔特朗普的債務並分給他30%的利潤，還會出錢請他幫忙管理現場的開發。他們同意爲開發該項目提供資金。那是他當時收到的最好要約，遠超其他方面提出的條件。香港財團中包括全世界最富有的房地產開發商之一鄭家純(Henry Cheng Kar-Shun)和羅康瑞(Vincent Lo)，後者在很多方面都堪稱中國的特朗普。

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.

和特朗普一樣，羅康瑞也出身富裕家庭。他因爲在上海創立了一個名叫新天地的流行餐飲區而聲名遠揚。後來，他將新天地這個高檔品牌複製到了中國各地。他的生活被小報和其他報紙的八卦版塊大肆報道，尤其是他與第一任妻子離婚並迎娶1977年的香港小姐冠軍的事情。

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.

儘管有諸多相似之處，但特朗普在收到去香港商談交易的邀請時仍有些猶豫。當時負責爲特朗普處理收購和財務事務的執行副總裁阿貝·沃勒克(Abe Wallach)說，特朗普不喜歡遠行，並且害怕在香港開發商的地盤上談判會使自己處於不利地位，讓自己顯得軟弱。

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.

但進行面對面的會談在中國的商業文化中至關重要。在這種文化中，要依靠統稱關係的人脈和政治關係來避免和解決商業糾紛，它們有時候比法律制度更重要。最終，特朗普的助手讓他相信，他必須得去。

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，高爾夫球比賽、宴會和密集的談判期間出現了所有事關重大的跨國談判都可能會出現的尷尬時刻和文化誤會。羅康瑞和鄭家純邀請特朗普去打高爾夫，但得知他們每一洞的賭注通常都高於1000美元時，特朗普感到難以接受。羅康瑞本月接受採訪時回憶說，最終每一洞的賭注是100美元，特朗普後來輸的比贏的要多。

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

“他高爾夫打得不錯，但我們對場地比較熟悉，他可能也因爲長途旅行而感到疲勞，”羅康瑞說。

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.

羅康瑞和鄭家純還邀請特朗普去鄭家純父親的家裏吃飯。在中國文化中，這是一種難得的榮幸。但對特朗普來說，那天晚上非常難熬。

“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.”

“他不喜歡桌上的食物，也不會用筷子，”當時同在現場的沃勒克說。“第一道菜是一整條魚，沒有去頭。能看到魚的臉和牙齒，看上去真的很難看。傭人把魚放在特朗普面前。特朗普說，‘這份榮譽屬於阿貝。’於是我便拿起筷子開始夾魚肉。”

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

鄭家純和羅康瑞還半開玩笑地提議進行一場非正式的喝酒比賽，但被滴酒不沾的特朗普拒絕了。

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.

特朗普愛打官司的名聲得來不虛，香港的合作伙伴對此頗爲警惕。但在十多年裏，特朗普避免與他們發生衝突。事實上，他經常聽從他們的意見。持有特朗普的抵押貸款資產的大通曼哈頓銀行(Chase Manhattan Bank)最初安排在中國鬼月期間完成交易。一些人認爲，亡者的靈魂會在鬼月回到人間。

“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.

“中國人對我說，我們得等到9月15日以後才能完成交易，”沃勒克在尚未出版的一本著作的其中一章中寫道。他正在寫的這本書回顧了他追隨特朗普的那些年。“特朗普怒不可遏。”但他說特朗普最後還是同意了。

(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.)

（羅康瑞稱延遲都是因爲需要備齊全部文件，並表示他和他的生意夥伴並不迷信。）

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.

隨着紐約房地產市場的復甦，這個項目被證明利潤非常豐厚。2005年，香港的合夥人以17.6億美元的價格將項目出手。儘管當時被認爲是該市歷史上最大的住宅類房地產交易，特朗普依然很憤怒，並且至今堅稱合作伙伴沒有先諮詢他的意見。

“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.

“我說：‘你們爲什麼不告訴我？不管你們賣了多少錢，我都會拿到更好的價格，’”特朗普本月接受採訪時說。

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.

羅康瑞稱特朗普知道相關決定，並表示無論如何，要在特朗普不知道的情況下爲這麼大一處產業尋找買家是非常困難的。

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.”

特朗普沒有接受自己應得的那一份收益，而是提起訴訟，控告合作伙伴“嚴重違反受信義務”，要求獲得10億美元的損害賠償。羅康瑞覺得特朗普應該對自己拿到的交易心存感謝，稱對訴訟“感到震驚”。

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.

當香港的合作伙伴尋求用出售美國銀行大樓得到的收益在舊金山和紐約投資時，特朗普申請了強制令，進行阻撓。

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.

法官裁定特朗普敗訴。沒有如願拿到錢的他，不得不接受兩棟美國銀行大樓所產生利潤的30%。這筆錢被拴在了一種合作運營中。該合作關係將持續到2044年。但如今，特朗普稱那次敗訴是一場勝利。

“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.”

“更多的是憑藉運氣而非天賦，我到最後的結果好多了，因爲兩棟樓升值了，”他說。“最後挺好的。”

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，特朗普河濱南那場官司持續了至少四年。他迫使合作伙伴在法庭上出示了超過16.6萬頁文件，並指控他們有多種不當行爲，包括詐騙和逃稅。

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.

訴訟期間，羅康瑞被迫對自己去美國保密，因爲擔心特朗普的律師會給他拿來強迫他留在美國的法庭文件。

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，特朗普的戰鬥，似乎是以和羅康瑞進行個人之間的較量這種形式進行的。羅康瑞贊助了中國一檔名爲《創智贏家》的電視真人秀節目。它和特朗普的《學徒》(The Apprentice)大致類似，不過羅康瑞只在節目上出現了一次。他提供給獲勝者的是創業資金而非工作機會。

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.”

特朗普曾宣稱，他將在中國推出另一個版本的《學徒》，與羅康瑞的節目競爭，不過特朗普的新節目似乎尚未啓動。在一次採訪中，特朗普先向記者詢問了羅康瑞的節目情況如何，然後纔回答了對方的問題：這麼說吧，它跟取得了巨大成功的《學徒》不一樣。”

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

羅康瑞說其節目的真正目的是推廣創業精神，該目的已經達到。

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.

那場官司之後，特朗普的香港合作伙伴們迅速斬斷了與他的所有關係。羅康瑞將其在合夥公司的股份賣給了鄭氏家族，鄭氏家族又將股份賣給了沃那多房產信託（Vornado Realty Trust，簡稱VNO)，目前VNO持有美國銀行大樓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.

但在接受採訪時，特朗普幾乎是在以懷念的語氣談論從前的合作伙伴，驚歎於他們一起賺過多少錢，以及他們已經不再搭理彼此這個事實。他最終承認，前合作伙伴或許是以最好的價錢出售了河濱南。

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

“發生這種事真是太糟糕了，”特朗普告訴一位記者。

“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.?”

“如果遇到羅先生和鄭先生，請告訴他們我認爲他們都是很好的人，”他說。“請讓他們知道，唐納德·特朗普非常尊敬他們。”

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，羅康瑞在其位於頂樓的辦公室裏聽說特朗普的評論後笑了起來。他明確表示還沒忘記曾遭起訴索償10億美元。

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

“是啊，他就是這樣一個人，”羅康瑞說。“打官司就跟吃午飯差不多，根本不算什麼。”