China's stock market turbulence is over? Don't count on it

The extraordinary recent boom-bust trading pattern appears to have been halted, but China's growth model has to change and become less reliant on investment

The numbers are mind-boggling. Ten days of falls on the Shanghai stock exchange resulted in losses that exceeded the GDP of Mexico. And 12 million Chinese citizens who opened share-trading accounts in May were nursing potentially ruinous losses. Margin trading - speculating on the stock exchange with borrowed money - increased five-fold in a year to 2.3tn yuan (230bn).

While Europe's focus has been the crisis in Greece, the Chinese stock market has been gripped by panic. The value of shares went up by 150% in little more than a year, then fell by 50% in just a few weeks.