(Bloomberg) -- Kweichow Moutai Co. fell the most in nearly two years after the influential People’s Daily took aim at the high price of the liquor it makes, saying the alcohol was often used in corruption cases.

Moutai, China’s biggest domestically listed company, tumbled as much as 8.4% in its worst decline since October 2018. Moutai’s products are often involved in the country’s official corruption cases and used for bribery given their high prices, according to a commentary carried by a WeChat account owned by the People’s Daily.

The plunge reverberated across China’s almost $10 trillion stock market, with the SSE 50 Index of the nation’s largest companies sinking as much as 3.9%, its worst decline since early February. Other liquor makers also plummeted, with Wuliangye Yibin Co., Jiangsu Yanghe Brewery Joint-Stock Co. and Luzhou Laojiao Co. all falling more than 9%.

The comments were seen as the latest efforts by officials to cool sentiment in the nation’s equities after retail investors took on the most amount of leverage in five years to speculate in the shares. Targeting Moutai, one the most popular stocks in the country, is also a tested strategy: in 2017, Xinhua News Agency said the stock was rising too fast, triggering a wider selloff.

“Both Moutai shares and its products are hot investment targets, and cracking down on them signals the regulators’ determination to remove froth from the A-share market,” said Zhang Gang, a strategiest at Central China Securities Co. “Moutai is such a heavyweight and if this bubble keeps building, the aftermath will be terrible if it burst. Policymakers do not want to repeat the history of 2015.”

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