AS LONG as they stay on the right side of political battles, officials who reach the exalted heights of Chinese government can generally count on job security. Firing them in the middle of their term for poor performance is almost unheard of. The removal last week of Xiao Gang, China’s securities regulator (pictured), more than two years before the end of his term, was thus remarkable.
It was bad enough that a stockmarket bubble had swollen and burst on Mr Xiao’s watch. He became chief of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) in early 2013; the stockmarket rally began in mid-2014 and turned into a mania before collapsing in mid-2015, wiping out some $5 trillion in wealth. Worse, his fingerprints were all over the market’s excesses, when it soared and when it fell.
On the way up, he was an energetic cheerleader. In the months before the crash, when prices were already unsustainably high, Mr Xiao described the rally as a “reform bull”—that is, a fair response to the government’s economic-reform plans, however vague and incremental they actually were. He also missed the dangers...Continue reading
Source: Business and finance http://ift.tt/1OxlmKt
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