China’s bungled stock market bailout was a significant setback to its decades-long efforts to build a modern financial system. Its currency devaluation shocked global investors and altered the policy calculus at central banks from Hanoi to Washington. A highly anticipated package of overhauls to sprawling state-owned companies was a crushing rebuke to hopes that China would move to privatize such businesses. Instead of reducing their stakes, the Communist Party said it would increase its control over such companies. To many global policy makers and investors, China’s spate of surprises is driven by the government’s need to get the economy back on track. Growth is slipping. The latest data on Monday showed that the economy grew at 6.9 percent in the third […]