I got into a shouting match with my 83-year-old father-in-law the other day in Shanghai. He had invested 300,000 yuan ($45,940) in Zhongda, an obscure peer-to-peer lending company based in Zhejiang Province. So far he has not suffered a loss from his adventure but he has refused to pull his money out despite my insistence that he do so.
My father-in-law does not fit the stereotype of an unsophisticated Chinese senior citizen. He was a senior engineer at China Petroleum & Chemical, known as Sinopec, before retiring over two decades ago. Since then, he has played the stock market and the housing market with mixed results.
