Again, the combination of collapsed property spending, rocketing financial savings and weak personal income and consumption has left China with a recessionary economy, huge excess liquidity and soaring external imbalances.

In the process, it has also put global attention solidly back on "structuralist" prescriptions on how to fix the situation, i.e., income redistribution, household support and especially the need to improve the social safety net.

But in reality it's hard to show that these are serious problems. Household consumption spending may be unusually low in China, but disposable income shares are more in line with the rest of the world. And when we look at the state of healthcare, pension and education coverage they look exactly like any other country at a comparable level of income. Simply put, there's no evidence that China actually has a weak social safety net.

Which unfortunately leaves the government without an easy playbook. Everyone agrees that the mainland needs to get households "moving" ... but there's no consensus on how this could be done, and after two years of stimulus efforts Beijing has little to show for its efforts to date.