So what? That would have been the external response a decade ago to a crunch in China’s financial markets. Today is another matter.

With the capital account of the balance of payments only partially liberalised, the financial spillover in global markets from the recent spike in China’s interbank interest rates was admittedly minimal. Yet if the move by the People’s Bank of China to damp the credit bubble turns out to signal a more restrictive credit environment, damaging reverberations will clearly be felt by trading partners such as Japan, South Korea, Brazil and Australia. Slower economic growth in the world’s second-largest economy would also put further pressure on commodity markets.

In meetings I had in Beijing last week organised by the monetary think-tank Omfif, senior officials were emphatic that the PBoC’s refusal to provide liquidity to overstretched lenders did not mark a policy watershed. What seems clear is that the central bank was curbing credit growth and imposing a de facto stress test to encourage better liquidity management by the banks.