Shanghai, which was the world’s best performing stock market in 2007, dropped 0.7 per cent on Wednesday to end at 1,820.8 – a loss of 65.4 per cent since last year in what has been an awful 12 months for Asian markets.

As markets around the world felt the impact of the financial crisis, the FTSE Asia Pacific index dropped by more than 43 per cent in value – its worst annual loss since the benchmark started in the 1980s.