Crime · China, and Chinese-speaking networks internationally
Mirror transaction
In plain English
The settlement mechanism behind most Chinese underground banking. Money moves within each jurisdiction and never across the border between them: a payer hands over funds in one country, a counterpart releases the equivalent in another, and the two sides are reconciled against each other. The operators describe the objective as 兩地平衡 — balance in two places.
Register
Subjects' own term. The subjects' own vocabulary. Useful for recognition; not a neutral description.
Literally
Striking against each other — the two sides of a matched pair.
What English gets wrong
English-language material uses "mirror transaction" and Chinese-language material uses 對敲, and almost nothing connects the two. An analyst reading a Chinese source will not recognise the English term of art, and vice versa. Note also that in securities contexts 對敲 refers to wash trading and matched orders, so the context has to be stated — though even there it is market and enforcement vernacular, not a term used by the Securities Law itself.
What to write instead
duìqiāo (mirror transaction), giving both, because a reader is likely to have met only one.
Related
- Underground banking — 地下錢莊 / 地下钱庄
Sources
- Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate commentary on the 2019 judicial interpretation concerning unlawful payment settlement and foreign-exchange dealing, which uses 对敲型地下钱庄 and 两地平衡
- US Treasury usage of "mirror transactions" as a term of art