Shares in Kweichow Moutai, producer of a fiery alcoholic drink, have plunged 15 per cent this week as Chinese markets remain under pressure. The scale of the drop recalls the last time the stock was in the doldrums about five years ago as President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign clamped down on the elaborate banquets that Moutai’s tipples helped to lubricate.

As China’s main stock market index nurses a drop of more than 20 per cent this year, investors are in no mood to celebrate. Trade tensions between the US and China have been fingered as the culprit, alongside a slowing domestic economy, but Beijing should not escape blame.

Official efforts to talk up equities will ultimately prove unsuccessful and are the latest clumsy stock market intervention. Cumulatively, they only add to the sense that Beijing policymakers still harbour a mistrust of the private sector.