TRYING to assess Chinese listed companies according to market techniques used in Hong Kong or Singapore is, more often than not, an exercise in futility.
Chinese investors do not behave the way they do in the mature capitalist markets, listed companies do not obey trading rules, and regulators do not do what they are supposed to do.
What you get is an incoherent market driven intensely by speculation, rumours and hearsay, a market which behaves in a totally illogical way to foreign observers.
Some say these are signs of an emerging market dominated by unsophisticated retail investors and it will take some time before it reaches the level of maturity seen in Hong Kong.
They have a point. As experienced elsewhere, it will not be until China has seen its fair share of scandals and frauds before things are put right. There were several scandals this year. The latest involves the trading of supposedly non-tradeable bonus shares of the country's most profitable listed company, Sichuan Changhong Electric.
The point is, there seems to be a growing number of listed companies, in cahoots with their brokerages, openly flouting trading rules at the expense of retail investors.
It has reached a stage where some analysts say it pays to flout the rules because violators are given only a written warning.