CHINA

Stamp Market Banned: Chinese authorities have closed the free market in postage stamps, the capital city’s closest thing to a stock exchange, which had attracted tens of thousands of eager speculators. By international standards, the market was tiny. But like Wall Street during the 1980s, it became a symbol of a new prosperity and captured the imagination of millions of ordinary Chinese who poured their savings into stamps. In Beijing, the improvised trading floor was in Yuetan park, where dealers gathered in a grove of pine trees. An official notice posted outside the park’s main gate, warns that speculation in stamps is a criminal offense and forbids unauthorized dealing anywhere in Beijing.