Beijing gets it wrong on stocks

AFTER taking a beating for the better part of a month, China’s stock market recovered slightly to end the week. But the gains of Thursday and Friday were a classic “dead cat bounce;” the headache the market has caused for the Chinese economy is far from over.

As a clarifying point, “stock market” as I use it here refers to the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges and the 12 different indexes which track Chinese stocks in the aggregate, because it’s easier that way, and there are no significant differences in behavior from one index to another.