What Would a Chinese Stock-Market Crash Look Like?

IF YOU were a Chinese worker you could have spent the past year toiling to earn a living. Or you could have bought some shares and sat on the sofa (see article). Chinese equities have been on a bull run of epic proportions. The CSI300, an index of the biggest mainland stocks, has more than doubled over the past year. That looks positively anaemic compared with ChiNext, a market for Chinese startups which has tripled in 12 months; let alone with shares in Qtone, an online-education company that gained almost 1,300% between its listing early in 2014 and the middle of this month. Its own directors have warned investors to be wary of “ignorant hype”.