The bloodbath in China’s stockmarket continued, the morning after the Shanghai Composite index closed down 8.5% and cast the shadow of a “Black Monday” around the world. By Tuesday morning other Asian markets were beginning to perk up, even as mainland China’s slid further. There is disagreement over which previous crisis offers the closest historical parallel to the current situation. Some commentators liken it to the Asian financial crisis of 1997, triggered by tightening monetary policy in America and currency devaluations in Asia. Others see it as a Chinese replay of the global financial crisis of 2008, when plunging asset prices caused several big banks to fail. Ominously, however, the best comparison may be to the Wall Street crash of 1929. At the time, it was widely assumed that the crash triggered the Great Depression—but modern research suggests that falling share prices were a symptom of deep problems in the real economy, not the cause. That mirrors the question being asked today: just how bad a state is China’s real economy in?