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The numbers are staggering, the Shangahi Composite, China's main stock exchange up more than 50% this year alone, on top of a 130% increase last year, the benchmark index passing a record 4000 last week. A buying frenzy fueled by small-type investors like retiree YangYongBiao. Every morning just as the market opens she checks her portfolio. “This is a good stock” she tells me, "I've made quite a lot of money."

She is just one of almost a hundred million chinese who now have their own stock trading account. "Chinese living standards are improving. We have extra money to invest now. Once we didn't even have enough to eat." She says.

Yang knows there are risks, the ShangHai Composite plummeted 9% in one day last February, the biggest fall in a decade, sending shockwave from New York to Bombay. Officials here are worried there could be much worse to come, warning of a bubble, urging investors to be cautious.

It is almost purely a speculative market, and that means that volatility is going to be greater in China than in say the US or Europe or other developed markets.

Even so in dollar value, more shares are now being traded on the Chinese Stock Exchange each day than anywhere else in Asia including Japan.

For a growing numer of Chinese with spare cash, it seems the lure of the booming stock market is hard to resisit, especially when banks are offering low intrest rates on savings and tough government regulations make it difficult to invest overseas. And for now that means Chinese shares could continue to defy gravity.
John Vause, CNN, Beijing.