Over the past year the -Chinese stock market has been racking up one record after another. In May, trading volumes exceeded the rest of Asia combined while money raised from initial public offerings has eclipsed all other markets.

Chinese companies listed at home and abroad became more valuable than the Japanese market and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), which only a few years earlier had been mired in bad loans, overtook Citigroup to become the biggest financial institution in the world in terms of market value.