Those of us who speak regularly with 'ordinary' Chinese people have noted some significant changes going on within the average Chinese person's attitude toward money, property, savings and credit.

For understandable historical and political reasons over many centuries, the largely agrarian population of China has learned to be frugal.

The pendulum of strong and poor harvests, the cyclical impacts of disease and pestilence, the regular invasions of marauding armies, and the feudal tithes of taxation to the current ruling power - all these experiences taught the ordinary Chinese folk to value a very private manage-ment of their savings and provisions for the next apocalyptic disaster.

Whilst renowned for their fascination for gambling - as entrepreneurs or simply on the horses - the Chinese do not see any paradox in this, against the need to save and conserve.

What better provision than the lucky numbers of 888 delivering a lottery win to outweigh the vaguaries of real life?

Enter the 21st Century.

A combination of the surfacing of family money stashed away in secret hideouts, the creation of cash-rich new businesses as state-owned enterprises become privatised, the opportunity to sell assets or receive compensation for fields turned into factories - all have brought a major cache of liquidity on to the Chinese economic scene.

Hence, the evolution of a consumer-driven market and the emergence of a potential middle class.

Soon will come the opportunity to own (and therefore speculate in) land and property. National and international banks are falling over themselves to offer money as loans, mortgages and most recently through credit cards.

And the national government is heavily promoting the Shanghai Stock Exchange as a global competitor to Hong Kong, Tokyo, and even Europe.

What better place for the asset or cash rich Chinese wealth creators to place their windfall earnings in the capitalist savings-bank

of the Stock Exchange? As the concept of inflation kicks in behind the double digit growth of China's GDP, and as new offshore money is introduced from Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and increasingly the US and UK, the idea of dealing in stocks and shares appeals to both the conservative (as a growth alternative to the 'under the mattress' tradition) and to the gambler (as an apparently risk-free route to a 'double your money' future).

So why the recent hiccup? Whilst Shanghai has historically been the commercial lead city and port for mainland China, with daily contact with the outside world, it has also retained an old reputation for corruption.

To the average investor in central China, there is only ever one outrider to enormous wealth and riches - the opportunity for white-collar crime, by government or party officials, by bank and financial managers, or even more lowly placed citizens.

It has always been an international experience when wealth is about, and there is little reason for the average Chinese person to believe that the Shanghai Exchange should be any different, especially following recent expulsions and media attention.

Worries, concerns and panic grow fast and are very infectious. Just like the speed of the run on US banks in the Great Depression, Chinese investment organisations became worried about the value of their savings going down rather than up, coupled with the fear of control moving into the hands of the corrupt.

Both business and ordinary folk began to doubt the efficacy of their personal investments if only for a day or two.

But unlike Wall Street in the 1920s, investment banking is now a global, twenty-four hour business.

So small doubts about corruption in Shanghai lead to multi-magnified implications for the whole world's finances in a matter of minutes.

Despite its speed of growth and volume of impact, the Chinese economy, and behind it the Chinese culture, is still a fairly new player within this multi-trillion dollar global board game.

The recent cold wind in share prices was not only the product of economic, technical and market phenomena it was a reminder that the third largest economy in the world thinks and acts in a fundamentally different way.

It was not a butterfly flapping its wings, but a Chinese investor thinking differently, which caused the tornado in the Wall Street and European Stock Exchanges.