The ever ingenious Chinese financial system has developed a new kind of Shadow Bank – insurance companies.

China’s $586bn stimulus package in 2009 caused a flurry of lending through the country’s financial arteries. Some of this money ended up leaking out of the banks into unofficial channels, including the country’s state banks and the giant provincially-owned pseudo banks called Trust Companies. By the end of 2014, these off-balance sheet loans accounted for 18 per cent of all financing, up from less than 2 per cent a decade earlier.

However, as this flood of cash poured into the economy, mainly into the property industry, it caused a tremendous asset bubble, and Beijing became nervous about the potential for the a collapse if all the air burst out of the market at the same time.