Even as China’s economy suffers, stocks soar. What’s going on?

F or Chinese investors, the grass is almost always greener elsewhere. The country’s stockmarket chronically underperforms, meaning that local punters look to bourses in, say, America or Japan, and devise ways of getting cash around China’s capital controls. But this year is different. The Shanghai composite, an index for mainland stocks, hit a ten-year high on August 25th. In dollar terms, it is up by 17% since the start of the year, ahead of both America’s S & P 500 and global indices.