However you measure it, the Chinese stock market is a bubble. Top cadres have warned as much. New offerings are doubling in value on day one and shareholder accounts are multiplying at a phenomenal rate. So far this year, the domestic currency “A” share market is up 43 per cent and daily turnover exceeds $30bn.

The authorities face a stark choice: act now to deflate the bubble or wait for the inevitable implosion – and equally inevitable street protests. But Beijing has limited tools with which to take pre-emptive action. Verbal warnings and the stemming of credit by hiking banks’ reserve requirements have both failed. Interest rates would need to be sky-high before investors spurned the stock market, up almost 1 per cent a day in the past two months, while bank deposits currently yield negative returns in real terms.