In a dimly lit brokerage nestled among Shanghai's gleaming office towers, a group of middle-aged Chinese gather every day to watch their life savings shrivel with every downward tick of a share price.
After 15 months of a near-relentless market decline, these punters are well used to falling prices. There isn't much conversation, just the occasional sigh, as they glumly watch flickering green prices on a large overhead screen.
But all it takes is for a reporter to ask what they think of the way China's policymakers have handled the sagging domestic markets and a chorus of complaints breaks the gloomy silence.
"I'm so mad my stomach is on fire!" said Xiao Jiang, a laid-off textile worker in her 40s who said she lost 40 to 50 per cent of her savings in the stock market this year.
"We were all taken in by that Zhu Rongji," she told Reuters, referring to the premier, the man most closely identified with economic policy. "He said China will open its markets, so we all invested all our money. It's gone now."
China's beleaguered stock markets have suffered from a policy vacuum this year as no leader wants to launch major reforms before an upcoming reshuffle of the political elite at the 16th Communist Party Congress beginning November 8, analysts said.
Regulators focused instead on cracking down on market corruption and improving corporate transparency, causing prices to tumble nearly 30 per cent since June 2001 and eroding domestic investor confidence in government support for the markets.
Some punters blame top regulator Zhou Xiaochuan for allowing too many public share offerings to flood the market in uncertain times. Others blast central bank governor Dai Xianglong for barring bank funds from stocks for fear of destabilising the fragile banking system.
The mention of Wen Jiabao, Zhu's expected successor as China's economic tsar, elicits more groans from investors.
And not even the Chinese president was spared. "Jiang Zemin keeps going on about the Three Represents," said 55-year-old Gao, referring to Jiang's theory that the Communist Party should embrace all elite groups of society, including the working classes, peasants, intellectuals and entrepreneurs.
"Well, I don't see any signs of that here," the part-time high-school teacher said vehemently, pointing to a screen awash with falling share prices.
Long-awaited official plans to boost China's $540 billion markets include a second board for up-and-coming private firms, stock futures to hedge risk, and a qualified institutional investor scheme to attract more foreign investors.
All have been put on hold in the market downturn. Analysts see the delay as temporary and are optimistic about China's commitment to reform, saying healthy equities are essential for domestic companies to raise money and restructure to meet greater competition in an opening economy.
"The new generation of leaders should be more open-minded than the older generation. On the policy side, I don't think they have much choice, the open-door policy must continue," said Liu Yang, a China fund manager at Atlantis Investment Management.
However, analysts say that even after the leadership transition, China is likely to move very slowly so as not to jeopardise economic stability and risk social unrest, especially as many changes will be painful for individual investors.
At the top of the reform agenda is an unpopular plan to cut the government's huge stake in listed companies, aimed at freeing up trade in two-thirds of the stock market, lower overvalued shares and raise money to meet a widening budget shortfall.
China's first plan to sell some state shares was scrapped in June after it helped trigger the market fall a year ago by raising fears a massive selldown would suck liquidity from the markets.
Experts said they expected the government to test the waters again next year, noting the failure of the pilot plan was a key factor in delaying other reforms this year.
"These problems must be resolved, it's not an option. To have a healthy capital market, China has to find a solution that is socially, economically and politically acceptable," said venture capitalist Wang Enqiang, director of Venture TDC Shanghai Co Ltd.
Economist Clifford Tan of Salomon Smith Barney said China may focus too much on expanding the markets for raising capital and not enough on ensuring it is doing so efficiently.
"I'm a bit concerned that the focus has shifted too much to fund-raising rather than sensibly designing the market," he said.
"You can fasten bells and whistles... but if the underlying accounting raises questions, you're not going to be able to do much on that foundation in my opinion."
Punters couldn't agree more. Back at the Shanghai brokerage, a woman in her 50s complains she lost half her savings in the market and now has no money to send her daughter to university.
"The stock market is a gigantic casino operated by the Communist Party. They make all the rules and steal money from ordinary people," she grumbles.