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The Dow Jones Plunged More Than 1,000 Points as Wall Street Hit by Record China Slump

The day saw China's main index — the Shanghai Composite in China — close down at 8.5 percent, after its worst day since 2007. And the repercussions were felt around the world.
Photo par Jerome Favre/EPA

China's economy continues to tank, and state media dubbed today's stock market plunge "Black Monday." This saw China's main index — the Shanghai Composite — close at 8.5 percent down, after experiencing its worst day since August 2007.

The knock-on effect of this drop could also be felt across the globe. The Dow Jones index in the US fell more than 1,000 points at the start of trading on Monday. Prior to this, the Dow had never lost more than 800 points in a single day.

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Half an hour into trading, it had stabilized somewhat, though was still down 4 percent.

In London, the FTSE 100 fell for the 10th day in a row, hitting the lowest it's been since the beginning of 2013. Some 40 billion pounds ($62 billion) has been wiped off its value.

Related: China's Stock Markets Are Collapsing Again — And No One Knows What the Government Will Do

The price of gold has dropped 0.6 percent, according to the Financial Times, while oil prices hit a six-year low on Monday, as did the Australian dollar.

Nosedive! China stocks drop 8.49% on Monday to close at 3209.91 - sharpest decline since Feb. 2007 — China Xinhua News (@XHNews)August 24, 2015

"Markets are panicking. Things are starting look like the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s. Speculators are selling assets that seem the most vulnerable," Takako Masai, head of research at Shinsei Bank in Tokyo, told Reuters.

Eiji Kinouchi, chief technical analyst at Japanese investment bank Daiwa Securities, told reporters that China could be forced to devalue the yuan even more. "The equity markets are dealing with the prospect of a weaker yuan amplifying the negative impact from a sluggish Chinese economy," he said.

On August 11, the People's Bank of China devalued the yuan in a move which Beijing said was to encourage market liberalization, and commentators said was an attempt to resuscitate the Asian country's faltering stock market and economy. China then devalued its currency for the next two successive days.

China's move to a market-based economy in the 1970s transformed it into one of the world's largest and most influential countries in terms of industry. However, the World Bank still classifies it as a developing country, with some 98.99 million of its 1.3 billion people living below the national poverty line in 2012.

Related: Vietnam Is Pissed that China is Blowing Up the South China Sea