At the start of 2004, a man walked up to the offices of China’s stock market regulator in Beijing and tried to set himself on fire. His reason? To complain about the collapse in share prices.

Fast-forward two years and the country is in the grips of a bout of stock market fever. Having seen the market rise 130 per cent in 2006, bringing to an end a five-year slump, thousands of investors are signing up every day to open brokerage accounts.