About a week
after Shanghai's main stock index broke above 4,000 points in April, the
leading newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party weighed in with
patriotic glee.
Not only was the bull run just beginning, said a widely-read, and later ridiculed, editorial from the People's Daily.
In the longer term, it continued, the "Chinese Dream" of rising prosperity and security championed by President Xi Jinping would be reflected in capital markets, creating "huge" investment opportunities.
The stock market turmoil in the last month has shattered that particular dream for many small-time players, though the risk of contagion from a relatively narrow class of retail investors who dominate Chinese equities appears small for now.
Beijing had earlier stepped in to address the property boom and mounting bad debts, two potential danger zones in the economy, helping to bring down house prices and shift local government debt to longer term maturities to avert a crisis.
Now it must find ways to change economic gear from massive stimulus to consumer-led growth, and the slump in stocks has not helped.
Zhou
Sujuan, a 44-year-old manager at a private medical device company in
Wenzhou, a coastal city 450 km (280 miles) south of Shanghai known for
its entrepreneurial spirit, lost 2 million yuan ($322,186) in the
selloff.
The scope of Xi's vision of the future goes well beyond a few million people investing in shares, and is key to maintaining stability among the population of 1.3 billion.
A volley of government policies and edicts has turned the stock market around, at least for now. Despite recent sharp falls, values are roughly double what they were a year ago.
Delivering on the broader promise is likely to prove harder, as a series of interviews with Chinese people from a range of backgrounds underlines.
Sluggish property, weak consumer spending, factory gate prices falling for over three years and local governments laden with $3 trillion in debt mean the economy is expected to grow at its slowest pace in a quarter of a century this year.
China's success or otherwise in reviving growth is one of the biggest factors hanging over the global economy, with implications for companies across continents and industries, from automakers and luxury goods makers to miners and farmers.
In the longer term, it continued, the "Chinese Dream" of rising prosperity and security championed by President Xi Jinping would be reflected in capital markets, creating "huge" investment opportunities.
The stock market turmoil in the last month has shattered that particular dream for many small-time players, though the risk of contagion from a relatively narrow class of retail investors who dominate Chinese equities appears small for now.
Beijing had earlier stepped in to address the property boom and mounting bad debts, two potential danger zones in the economy, helping to bring down house prices and shift local government debt to longer term maturities to avert a crisis.
Now it must find ways to change economic gear from massive stimulus to consumer-led growth, and the slump in stocks has not helped.
The scope of Xi's vision of the future goes well beyond a few million people investing in shares, and is key to maintaining stability among the population of 1.3 billion.
A volley of government policies and edicts has turned the stock market around, at least for now. Despite recent sharp falls, values are roughly double what they were a year ago.
Delivering on the broader promise is likely to prove harder, as a series of interviews with Chinese people from a range of backgrounds underlines.
Sluggish property, weak consumer spending, factory gate prices falling for over three years and local governments laden with $3 trillion in debt mean the economy is expected to grow at its slowest pace in a quarter of a century this year.
China's success or otherwise in reviving growth is one of the biggest factors hanging over the global economy, with implications for companies across continents and industries, from automakers and luxury goods makers to miners and farmers.
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