Asia's richest man, Li Ka-shing, has also reportedly been banging the same drum. But it is not stopping small-time investors rushing into the breach. This is getting dangerous.

The figures suggest a good old gold rush is on in China. The main CSI index - tracking yuan-denominated, mainland-based, A shares which are not directly accessible to foreign investors - shot up threefold in the past year. That means those inside China are putting hard-won wealth and savings into a bubble.

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Mainland companies, many of them former state-owned behemoths that should have been taken out and shot years ago, are trading at an average of 48-times earnings. That is crazy.

But try telling that to the nearly 100 million Chinese holding shares in their hot hands. They are being joined by around 300,000 new investors in China every day.

Beijing has attempted to temper those heaving hearts. It has tripled the tax on trading securities.

This may work. But it may also be counterproductive. Consumers - and investors are simply consumers of a product like anyone else - are a strange beast, especially when frenzied.

In many ways, consumers in a febrile market are not as rational as the economic traditionalists would have us believe. Making something more expensive gives it, well, cache. More tax, like higher share prices, can actually, paradoxically, stimulate investment.

That is especially so in China where decades of misrule have led to a belief among many that if the government says it is wrong, it is probably right.

Perhaps authorities need to be looking elsewhere, and perhaps consider a more indirect means of ensuring the market does not eat itself to death.

The area of securities research is one that has sent many a heart fluttering in even stock market-savvy economies like the United States and the United Kingdom.

We have all heard the stories of puffed-up analysts offering recommendations on stocks that are in line more with their own interests/egos than with their clients' interests or with the market's generally.

Numerous high-profile cases have showed just how difficult it can be to regulate the actions of high-powered and influential individuals and organizations and how hard it is to soften the impact on market confidence. An after-the-horse-has-bolted approach to legal remediation only adds to the depth of the problem that continues to hang over securities trading worldwide.

Jeremy Bolland, author of Writing Securities Research, argues that market professionals have to shoulder some of the blame for the Enrons and Parmalats of recent history. Such cases, he says, challenge the very foundations of capitalism itself.

Tellingly, Bolland is quick to point out that most analysts are not aware they may be breaching market rules or ethics standards and most are willing to comply once they understand their errors.

Whether Chinese securities researchers and analysts are so morally resolute is a moot point. But the central issue is that if there are to be laws and regulations, they must be very specific.

Speaking mainly of the US and European markets, Bolland thinks the regulations are sometimes so general and nonspecific that they provide huge scope for analysts, which may potentially be to the detriment of all.

This is not the case in China today. It is worse. China appears to have virtually no regulation on market analysis and research. My attempts to find the relevant laws led me to the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the 1998 Securities Law.

This document mentions the word research just once.

There is no mention of "analysis," "analysts" or "advisers."

There is apparently no mention of the obligations of investment professionals at all.

Other searches for relevant laws, regulations or guidelines in China were fruitless. This may be just a result of my incompetent research. But, anecdotal evidence tends to confirm a conclusion that Chinese securities analysis is more or less a free-for-all.

The effect of this can only be negative and, in a context of a white- hot market, it is potentially explosive. If analysts are able to give irrelevant, unsourced, or shoddy research, then the market is rotten. No market can truly survive such a failure. Going further, if analysts are able to play the market against itself, benefiting their interests at the expense of their clients', you can only imagine the damage and the eventual fallout.

All indicators are that the mainland is in dire need of regulations to ensure such perils are minimized. It may not quite be time to shoot the messenger, but it might be useful to show him or her the holster.

James Rose is editor of www.corporategovernance-asia.com