Heed Mr. Market

Wu Jinglian is an economist. Known as “Mr. Market,” in 2011 he is 81 and has struggled for forty years to promote a market economy. One of the original reformers, he has been a key advisor to China's leaders including Zhao Ziyang, and Zhu Rongji. In an interview with Chinese state television in January of 2001, he famously described the Chinese market as worse than a casino. “At least in a casino there are rules, like not peeping at others' cards,” he said. “But in our stock market, some players can peep at others' cards—they can cheat.”⁴⁷ Almost ten years later, although he is still at it, he recently “described the country's stock market as being in the ‘age of robber barons' and pointed to insider trading by government officials as especially common.”