Barron’s Few foreigners know China as intimately as Anne Stevenson-Yang does. She has spent the bulk of her professional life there since first arriving in 1985, working as a journalist, magazine publisher, and software executive, with stints in between.
These are just two of many snippets of gallows humor widely shared in the dark days of the Chinese stock market. They have been few in number of late, but their impact has been keenly and widely felt. On May 28, the standard-bearing Shanghai Composite Index lost an astonishing 6.5 percent to fall to 4,838 points by way of illustration, if the market fell at that rate for 12 days, which it almost certainly won’t, it would lose over half of its value. That plunge stands alongside another dip on May 5, 6, and 7, when the Shanghai index blipped lower, losing 8.5 percent of its value over three days. Even the smaller gyration in early May was severe enough to wipe out $1.4 trillion in paper value meaning an average of more t