re: #133 wheat-dogghazi-mailgate

The government does not want a laissez-faire marketplace, because most trading on China’s markets are by individual investors, who buy and sell in the hope of making quick pofits (or prevent serious losses). That makes the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets more volatile than the NYSE, for example, where trading is dominated by institutional investors that are less skittish.

Besides, China wants to look like it has a stable economy, given that nearly everyone outside China is saying it’s going to collapse.

Oh, that’s right. I remember that there was a lot of anger the first time there was a massive downturn because the gov’t had been encouraging individual investors to “get in” and the gov’t was quite embarrassed.

I don’t think China’s economy will collapse. It’s just too bad that single-digit percentage growth is seen as some kind of failure.