It wasn't enough that we started 2016 with one of the worst weeks in the recent history of Chinese and global markets, but the panic continued into the following weeks and wreaked a great deal of damage to confidence. A lot of the reflexive China bulls are cautioning against misinterpreting the implications of the stock market collapse, and of course they are right, but the fact that the plunging Chinese markets can easily be misinterpreted should not in any way suggest that things are fine. Two weeks ago in the FT Alphaville blog (which is the best place to read regularly about China's vulnerabilities, in my opinion, especially in their relentless focus on the changes in the various components of the balance of payments) Peter Doyle discussed one of the standard set of responses that we've seen repeated regularly since 2011 and 2012. The bull refrain has been, in his words: "things really aren't that bad or surprising, and there's considerable willpower and ammunition left in Beijing should it be necessary."