The rout of the Chinese market after weeks of dizzying climb can scarcely have come as a surprise. Many foreign commentators had been calling it a bubble for quite some time. While some of the more staid state companies in banking, power generation, etc. never looked especially expensive, the market was driven by absurdly fanciful valuations given to anything which claimed to be high tech, or whose rise was spurred by a bodyguard of hype and misinformation.