Pioneering investor dubbed ‘China’s First Shareholder’ dies

BEIJING (AP) — News reports say a former factory worker known as “China’s First Shareholder” after he amassed a fortune trading in the country’s infant financial markets starting in the 1980s has died. Business publications cited a statement by Yang Huaiding’s family that said he died Sunday at 71. Yang quit a job as a warehouse keeper at a Shanghai ferroalloy factory in 1988 and used his savings of 20,000 yuan ($5,400 at that time) to buy and sell Treasury bonds after the ruling Communist Party began allowing transfer of ownership as part of market-style economic reforms. Yang gained attention after he asked police to protect him while he carried boxes of cash and bonds from one province to another.