Many aspects of China's real-estate bubble mirror the run-up to the housing bust in the US. But there are important differences as well.

The consensus is that China has a real-estate bubble. The only argument is whether it will burst in some crash that will take down China's economy or come in for a relatively soft landing that slows China's economic growth but in no measure extinguishes it.

It's tough for me to come down on either side of that debate, because most of the time the protagonists don't bother to set out what the bursting of a real-estate bubble would look like in China. There's a kind of unspoken vague agreement that a Chinese bust wouldn't look like a U.S.-style one, but no real effort to put flesh on the bones of a China-style bust.

What 'middle class'...