Rumor has it: Journalist ‘confesses’ to sparking China market chaos

A financial journalist has “confessed” to causing “panic and disorder” on China’s stock market and inflicting “huge losses on the country,” state media reported on Sunday. Wang Xiaolu, a journalist with Caijing magazine, was detained by Chinese authorities following China’s recent stock market crash. Wang was held for fabricating and spreading fake information on securities and futures market, according to Xinhua, a state-run news agency. Wang wrote a story in July saying that the securities regulator was studying plans for government funds to exit the market.

I should not have published a report that heavily and negatively affected the market at such a sensitive time. … [I] caused such great losses to the country and to stock investors. I am deeply sorry.

Wang Xiaolu

Beijing has launched interventions on a grand scale to try to shore up plunging share prices after a debt-fueled bubble burst in June. Britain’s Financial Times reported that China had decided to stop buying shares in favor of intensifying a crackdown on those “destabilizing” the market; although there was speculation as recently as last Thursday that government funds were acquiring stock. The Ministry of Public Security also said that 197 people had been punished for “spreading online rumors” on several issues, including the markets and giant deadly blasts in the port of Tianjin on Aug. 12.

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