A remarkably forthright pronouncement from Xinhua, via People’s Daily:

According to the draft amendment, a special fund for protecting investors will be established. In the past, if stock exchanges lost money, they routinely embezzled customers’ money to make up their own loss. Customers’ cash saved in the stock exchange could not be retrieved at all, triggering great anger among stock market investors. The special fund will be established to return embezzled cash to investors, Xu said. The amendment stipulates stock market investor’s cash trust must be saved in the commercial banks, rather than stock exchanges. It means stock exchanges have no chances to embezzle money in future, Xu said.

In the past, stock buyers were often cheated by wrong information which were released by listed companies or stock exchanges and finally lost money. This time, the amendment stipulates that the organizations or individuals who cheated stock buyers must bear legal responsibilities. Shen Chunyao, member of the NPC Standing Committee, said China has more than 70 million stock market investors. “Their confidence toward the market attaches great importance to the rejuvenation of the stock market,” he said. Cheng Siwei, vice chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, said in a bid to boost stock buyer’s confidence, the most important issue is to guarantee a proper proportion of stock buyers could earn money from the stock market.

You can only read news like this in a country without lawyers.

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