John Authers, Columnist

Year of the Dragon Arriving With a Dead Cat Bounce

Here we go again. China’s repeated need for government intervention to move markets is a poor characteristic of its capitalism.

A ‘beckoning cat’ Japanese figurine believed to bring good luck. China could use some.

Photographer: Stefan Sauer/picture alliance/Getty

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Dead cats deserve respect. China’s stock market has just staged a rally for the ages, but after a prolonged fall it looks like a “dead cat bounce” — the charming Wall Street term based on the fact that even a stiffened feline corpse will rebound just a little if you drop it far enough (we can only speculate about a five-story building). But it’s still worth looking at how this happened and what’s been driving the changes.