Chinese get a taste of investing's downside

SHANGHAI, China — When emergency workers found Wang sprawled unconscious after having downed two bags of insecticide, he was still clutching the PDA he had been using to check stock prices.

Like a number of other small investors in China, Wang had bet — and lost — his life savings, about $15,000, on the Chinese stock market. The propaganda office and doctors at the hospital where he was treated said the 36-year-old factory worker had been preparing to get married and that he had hoped to use the money to buy an apartment for his fiancée.

Wang's attempted suicide and those of other investors are a heartbreaking consequence of China's great experiment in capitalism.

In February, Li, a 25-year-old engineer, jumped from the seventh floor of the building where he worked in the city of Chengdu. His company said he had lost a huge amount on the stock market. On March 30, a 39-year-old former ice-cream- shop owner, also named Li, leaped to his death from his apartment building in the inland province of Shandong after losing a third of the $4,500 he had invested.

As China's stock markets crashed over the past six months, the Communist government reacted in a way most consumer investors like Wang did not anticipate: It watched from the sidelines. It wasn't until last week, after the Shanghai benchmark index's fall to a symbolic milestone, below 50 percent of its peak in October, that Beijing finally stepped in.

Its announcements that it would slash a tax on stock transactions and control volatility by requiring some big block trades to take place off the regular stock market, pushed the market up 14 percent. It has fallen again since then, however.

But given that the Chinese government has the power and money to do much more, some say the fact that its help arrived so late and is so limited means it is sending a message to shareholders that they should no longer expect a government bailout in such situations.

The former shop owner's sister, Li Chunyan, 34, said she understands that those who lost everything have only themselves to blame for risking so much. But because the stock market is "damaging common people's lives this much, there should be policies" to help them. She said even the U.S. government is doing more to help its investors: "I heard about the U.S. lowering interest rates to save the market," she said. "Well, different countries are different."

In online bulletin-board postings, small-time retail investors — who, unlike in U.S. markets, make up the vast majority of those who hold money in China's exchanges — have vented their anger at the government. "China's stock market is piled up with investors' tears and blood," wrote one shareholder.

Institutional investors, fund managers and analysts who follow the Chinese stock markets are less sympathetic, saying that the suffering of consumers who lost money is a necessary step on the road to capitalism.

"You lose money, you jump out the window, too bad. It's your problem," said Vincent Chan, head of China research for Credit Suisse. "For any market to grow, this is something the government should realize: At the end of the day, it's the investors who bear the responsibility of the investment, not other people."

The nose-dive of the Shanghai stock market and its sister exchange in the southern city of Shenzhen has been humbling for Chinese investors who had once believed the only direction share prices could go was up.

Analysts say they were overdue for a correction. Despite weak earnings by many companies and rampant corruption, the Shanghai composite index quadrupled in value from 2002 to 2007.

Briefly in November, PetroChina became the world's first $1 trillion company by some measures of its market value. But by the end of April, shares of PetroChina had plummeted to below its IPO price for the first time.

Andy Xie, a former chief economist for Morgan Stanley Asia Pacific and now an independent analyst, said the challenge for the Chinese public is that "generally speaking, retail investors bought stocks at a high point. They listened to their relatives, friends and heard propaganda.

"When the stocks fall, they are unwilling to sell off and they sit there waiting for the government to save the markets," he said. "This is not rational."

Psychologists across the country say that in recent months they have seen more patients seeking treatment for addiction to gambling.

Some investors like Ma Guocheng, 26 and an office worker, say they have learned their lessons from the recent stock-market plunge. In April and May 2007, Ma invested some 270,000 yuan — about $38,600 at today's exchange rate — in stocks. By November, those shares were valued at 440,000. He thought about selling, but then he thought they would climb even higher. Now his holdings are worth 50,000, about $7,000.

"I was greedy," Ma admitted. As a consequence, "I lost more than 80 percent of my total investment."