When Christopher Cox, new chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, told a room packed with Chinese regulators and politicians that their country?s capitalism was in danger of meeting the same fate as the Qing dynasty, he committed more than a cultural faux pas.

Delivered to a stunned audience at a Beijing conference last month, his comparison with the 1911 bloodshed that ended China?s imperial age will have done the New York Stock Exchange no favours at a time when it is already missing out on listings by large Chinese companies.