China's companies found a solution to stop the massive market crash - suspend 651 stocks

Chinese stock markets are in serious trouble, with the country's benchmark Shanghai Composite plunging 30% in just three weeks - now the markets may have found the solution.

China is already trying to stop mirroring the 1929 Wall Street crash, which led to the Great Depression in the US in the 1930s, by getting it's top stock brokerages to pledge to collectively buy at least 120 billion yuan (£12.3 billion, $19.3 billion) of shares to help steady the market, with backing from the People's Bank of China.

But now Chinese companies have decided to take matters into their own hands and they just found a better and easier solution - suspend the company's stocks from being traded at all.

According to China's official financial news outlet The Securities Times, picked up by the Financial Times and Reuters, more than 200 companies just suspended their shares. This brings the total amount of shares suspended to 651 since June 29, which is worth 23% of the 2,808 companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges.

China's stock market is around 30% lower than less than a month ago at 3,679.73. Today, as of 7:22 a.m. BST (2:22 a.m. ET) was down just over 1%.

It's little wonder that the the stocks were suspended, to stop the market cratering further, as bank analysts predict that the crash is going to get worse.

On July 6, Citi analyst Jason Sun and his team said in a research note that Chinese stocks "still [have a] long way to go."

Citi say: "Despite the sentiment help, we believe continued deleverage, and possible reform concerns given recent administrative intervention, will cap index upside. We estimate one-fourth margin buys forced out, still long way to go."