If I simply showed you the following graph of a stock market losing nearly 60% of its value in 9 months, you'd probably conclude that a bubble had burst, and that the country whose companies it represented was probably in for some big Hurting:

So why has China been immune from such analysis? Presumably because the "story" behind China's growth is so compelling. Just about everybody seems to agree that China is the emerging economic world superpower.
Well, it's difficult to imagine now what life would be like without the internet, and yet that didn't stop the dot-bomb crash of 2000-2002. And the Mississippi Land Bubble was based on the accurate belief that what is now the US midwest would someday be the breadbasket of the world. Unfortunately they were off by 150 or so years.