China's major stock exchanges tanked on the first trading day of the year, triggering a "circuit-breaker" that suspended equities trade nationwide for the first time and put months of regulatory work to restore market stability at risk.
The selloff saw the CSI300 index of the largest listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen lose 7.0 percent before trading was suspended, its worst single-day performance since late August 2015, after a summer stock market rout.
Monday’s collapse, which followed the release of weak economic data, raises fresh doubts about regulators' capacity to wind back heavy trading restrictions implemented in the wake of a massive summer stock crash in which major indexes lost as much as 40 percent before top leadership intervened.
Many analysts attributed the decline to the imminent end of a 6-month lockup period on share sales by major institutional investors, a policy implemented to shore up indexes in the wake of the crash.