Pioneering Chinese investor dies aged 71

Sun rises over the city of Shanghai (David Davies/PA)

A former factory worker known as “China’s First Shareholder” after he amassed a fortune trading in the country’s infant financial markets in the 1980s has died at the age of 71, according to news reports.

Yang Huaiding quit a job as a warehouse keeper at a Shanghai ferroalloy factory in 1988 and used his savings of 20,000 yuan (£3,800 at that time) to buy and sell Treasury bonds after the ruling Communist Party began allowing the transfer of ownership as part of market-style economic reforms.