Chinese schools launch stock market classes

Future traders?

China has seen weeks of share-price woes, but the southern province of Guangdong is planning for the longer term with stock market lessons for pre-teens.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission has asked 36 schools in one of the country's richest provinces to teach upper primary school students "how to manage money and trade stocks", according to the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper. This will involve about 10,000 students in a pilot programme, beginning next month. If successful, the new curriculum will expand to the rest of the province, the paper says.

The plan has sparked extensive and often heated debate on China's micro-blogging site Weibo. Some users approve, saying it is never too early to learn money management, but others think that the education system simply isn't up to the task. "They're not capable of teaching sex education or law yet, and more importantly children should be taught how to behave first," says one user. Many worry about the moral impact, with a concerned reader suggesting "Early exposure to stock markets could encourage children to gamble". But one cynic suspects an ulterior motive - the markets have "wrung out the pensioners, and now want to sink their claws into little shareholders".

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