The academic effects would be worse than the real effects. China won't just stop buying stuff from the West, and the stuff they buy isn't quite critical. You'

The academic effects would be worse than the real effects. China won't just stop buying stuff from the West, and the stuff they buy isn't quite critical. You'd see a commodities softening, which would hurt Aussie Canada, but hey, cheap commodities for others is not so bad. Surely manufactured goods would be cheaper, or won't rise with inflation, again good for Western surpluses. But the perceived economic shocks would be bad: Wall Street is looking for a reason to sell off right now, given historic highs, ugly multiples, everyone's looking at each other waiting to see who'll hit the panic button first, so some 'big ugly macro news' is enough to stifle things quite substantial. Macro perception is important, much like in 2008 the most important part of the bailouts were not the bailouts, but the signal of the bailouts i.e. implying that 'the Fed + Gov has the back of the US economy' meaning everyone can move forward knowing there will be no domino failure. By so many accounts China needs to slow down anyhow.