Waiting for the sun

Blame the weather. Shanghai has been relentlessly gloomy for the last week or so, and it seems to have finally gotten to investors. Yesterday saw rumors of new regulatory restrictions drive the Shanghai Composite Index to a three-week low, despite the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) explicitly denying plans for any new rules. “Panic selling” was the word one analyst used to describe what resulted, with stocks like Anhui Conch Cement conking out. Regulatory reassurance was also the order of the day over at the China Banking Regulatory Commission, where Chairman Liu Mingkang promised the government would work to prevent a rise in bad debt after record lending in January. Bad debts aside, it’s nice to know that things in China aren’t (yet) as bad as they are elsewhere. The CIRC confirmed that China Life is in talks with AIG to buy some of the troubled – if that is a strong enough word – US insurer’s Asian assets. Unfortunately, other things in China aren’t doing so great: human rights, for instance. The US State Department has released its annual human rights report, lumping in China with North Korea and Myanmar, and triggering a predictable response from Chinese state media.