China's Yuppies Angry At Plunging Prices Of Stocks....

Seventy million people are believed to have bought shares after exchanges were opened in Shanghai and Shenzhen in the early 1990s.

Shares of companies trading on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges have recently seen prices fall to eight year lows.

Others, like Luo, have joined informal protests against the falling value of their stocks. They are most often drawn from China's 21st century yuppies: young urbanites who made money even more quickly than their 1980s Western counterparts, but who are now experiencing the double-edged sword of capitalism.

Part of the revaluation of share prices may be attributable to the pricking of the bubble of overoptimism on share prices over a decade a ago, but some can be explained by fraud and embezzlement at these listed companies.

Some have taken out lawsuits against companies accused of crimes ranging from embezzlement to artificially inflating share prices.

My old boss here in Hong Kong used to proudly show off his bookcase full of the great works of Chinese literature. He could probably add to his collection some of the propectuses and offering circulars of these companies as some great works of Chinese fiction.