Chinese ant farmers left with crumbs

Government officials endorsed a company that got people to buy boxes of insects to rear at home, for a promised 30% return. The ants were ingredients in health products including a version of Viagra.

Protests by angry investors, most of whom lost their life savings, were crushed. But some victims are theatening to disrupt this summer's Olympic Games.

Yilishen, the Magic Power of Ants, was promoted on TV in north-eastern China. Ant products, it was promised, would bring health and cure impotence. Better than that: if you invested in the company, you would become successful like its, CEO Wang Fengyou. He persuaded more than a million Chinese to buy boxes of ants to rear for Yilishen, with the promise of massive profit.

China's tallest man even endorsed Yilishen ant products, part of the cult of celebrity Wang Fengyou used to convince peasants and laid off factory workers to part with their savings. Then, last November, the company failed to pay out.

Angry investors demonstrated outside the government offices in Shenyang and surreptitiously filmed their protest. Many were arrested, others beaten by police determined to stop any more Chinese coming out on the streets.

Wang Fengyou's arrest was shown on local Shenyang TV. He was charged not with fraud, but with disrupting public order and interrupting the traffic. He made a public confession that he had called people on to the streets.

One desperate investor tried to slit her wrists, another set himself on fire near Tiananmen Square.Others are threatening to disrupt the Beijing Olympics.

The demise of Yilishen shows how China's get-rich-quick economy is shaped by relationships with officials, not regulation. By blaming Wang Fengyou and suppressing information, the Chinese government hopes to quash further protest. There is little they fear more than a million people with nothing left to lose.

Our China correspondent Lindsey Hilsum travelled to the north-eastern city of Shenyang to investigate the Yilishen story.

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