When 35-year-old Wei Wenyuan and several other Communist Party officials were asked to form a task force in 1990 to found communist China's first stock exchange, in Shanghai, they didn't know anything about such a quintessentially capitalist institution.
They didn't even know what a shareholding company was before their first tour of the Hong Kong stock exchange. But a few months later - on December 19, 1990 - Wei, the Shanghai stock exchange's first general manager, opened its first day of trading by striking a gong in a former hotel lobby turned into a trading hall.
It had just one 25-member brokerage house, some 30 listings, including eight stocks, and a daily turnover of about three million yuan.
Fast forward 21 years and the combined market capitalisation of the mainland's Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges is now the fourth largest in the world. Hundreds of state-owned and privately owned mainland companies have also listed in Hong Kong, New York, London and on other foreign bourses, with their shares eagerly snapped up by international investors.
It's proof that late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping was on to something when he told his comrades to immerse themselves in market economics as if they were 'crossing the river by feeling the stones'.
Former Communist Party officials who knew little about economics are now hailed as capable managers of some of the world's largest conglomerates. And Beijing has been praised for its successful macroeconomic management - turning the world's largest developing economy into its second largest in the past decade. China's economic boom has dazzled investors and captivated the world with a long list of much-envied accomplishments. The world's fastest-growing major economy, it now boasts the biggest foreign reserves, worth US$3 trillion, the longest and fastest high-speed rail system and largest car market.
