For China’s premier, the meltdown in his country’s stock markets last week was not the homecoming he had been looking forward to. Li Keqiang returned from a week-long visit to Europe as the Shanghai Composite Index fell below 3,700 points on July 3 — a date some Chinese policy makers now refer to as Beijing’s own Black Friday.
Mr Li’s meetings with EU leaders in Brussels had been rescheduled at the last minute because of the crisis in Greece, according to two people familiar with the visit. He returned to find China embroiled in its own crisis, with the SCI having fallen almost 30 per cent from a seven-year high three weeks earlier.
“Li was very angry when he came back from Europe and suddenly had to deal with a major problem of his own,” said one of the people familiar with the trip.