The Chinese economy isn't doing ok.

- Imports and exports have been crashing lower. [1]

- They've spent decades lying about their unemployment rate, leaving it mostly unchanged around 4.x% perpetually. [2] It's likely far higher, some good estimates peg it around 2 to 2.5 times higher.

- They've rapidly become one of the most indebted nations. Most of that occurred in just seven or eight years, taking on debt of epic proportions in record time. They took their total debt to GDP ratio from around 158% in 2007 to over 300% today. [3] [4] [5]

- They have perhaps 500 million people living on ~$3 per day. Most of those people are poor farmers, not allowed to own the farm land they work on. In any mid-tier or above economy, about 400+ million of those people would be unemployed, because farming productivity would be vastly higher. Instead, in China farming productivity is held artificially low, because those people would have nothing to do otherwise. South Korean farmers are upwards of 40 times more productive than Chinese farmers. [6]

- Since the great recession when China's boom ended, they've turned to stimulus programs and debt to fake growth, and have inflated at least two major asset bubbles, in real estate and equities. Both of which are now falling. The article notes that if you had bought stocks a year ago, you'd still be up nicely - I've noticed articles keep saying that as the market keeps falling, pretty soon it'll no longer be true. Then what?

- They had to aggressively devalue their currency, as a next to last ditch effort to shore up falling exports, and tumbling competitiveness.

- Return on invested capital domestically has been falling for years. As has the return on debt.

- Capital is rapidly fleeing China, to the tune of roughly 3/4 of a trillion dollars in the prior year. [7]

- China has begun eating their foreign reserves, consuming upwards of $300 billion over the last 12 to 14 months. [8] They have significant reserves of course, however only half of those are accessible without causing serious consequences for the global economy and their biggest customers.

- China may have vaporized $6.8 trillion on worthless investments. [9] The estimates could be off by a lot and it would still be a massive sum.

- China has spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to prop up their stock market bubble. The fall of that bubble, and the fall of their real estate bubble, will wipe out perhaps $10 plus trillion of assets. That removes a lot of assets that are needed to help offset their huge debt burden.

- China no longer has a significant advantage in manufacturing costs. Countries such as the US, Mexico and Vietnam are increasingly competitive versus China in manufacturing.

- Container rates for Asia and China are crashing, indicating deep economic problems. [10]

- Core industries like steel are falling hard. [11] [12]

This list just keeps going.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-imports-hitting-record...

[2] http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/08/unemploy...

[3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-15/china-s-de...

[4] http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-debt-bombs-1435512036

[5] http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26225205

[6] http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-farmer-productivity-2...

[7] http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/072715-763627-china...

[8] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-18/china-rese...

[9] http://www.cnbc.com/2014/11/27/china-has-wasted-68-trillion-...

[10] http://gcaptain.com/asia-europe-container-freight-rates-have...

[11] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-11/china-stee...

[12] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-09/china-stee...