China's stock market slide is now in its third week, losses since mid-June are valued at $3.2 trillion USD, that's $3,200,000,000,000 - which is an absurd amount of money.

What's happening?

This is a classic bubble in many ways. After years of exponential growth, the Chinese economy has been entering a natural period of slowing down, this coincided with the US and Europe's financial crisis, and the deflating of the country's overcooked property market.

Against this broad downturn the Government has been actively encouraging everyone to invest, so students, cab drivers, pensioners started throwing cash into the market - and everyone started making a lot of money.

"Chao gu" is the local slang for investing, it translates as 'stir-frying' - just throwing money out there. So the market has been booming - the economy has been stalling, and now it's all tightening.

How far will this go?

While the losses have been alarming - right now the market is still up a staggering 80 percent over last year.

After the slowdown property is steady - and interbank lending rates have not indicated panic - but the government's reaction certainly has.

The government and its central bank have has thrown the kitchen sink at trying to avoid panic. It's capping of short selling, buying of shares with funds backed with central bank cash and suspension of IPOs have created more panic - internationally at least.

80 percent of the money in the market is from retail investors - these are the everyday people, so one theory is that the state is fearing a total economic collapse and civil unrest. But away from the State the muted reaction indicates that this is not the case.

The market is also smaller there than in most Western countries. Its total value is one third of the country's GDP, the relevant number in most Western countries is over 100 percent.

Commentators suggest that the government's heavy-handed response is motivated by political rather than economic concerns, because the current government has been so 'pro-market.'

Will this hit international markets?

Only 1.5 percent of the shares on the Chinese market are owned by foreign investors. The Chinese-shock is already hitting commodity markets - but it we are not looking at something akin to the systemic market breakdown which happened in 2008.

While the market is still up by 80 percent over last year it's a worrying sign - but unlikely to hit European markets.

What about in China?

This picture has gone viral in China:

"Due to stock market's collapse the rooftop is now closed to prevent accidents" (in simplified Chinese. Online pix) pic.twitter.com/cRm6lDnzwo

— Venus Wu (@wu_venus) July 8, 2015

The more direct translation is: "Recently due to the nosedive of the stock market, in order to prevent accidents, this has been temporarily locked. The opening times of the rooftop will depend upon when the stock market recovers."

Grim-humour aside, Chinese workers are the big losers here. They have been pumping money into the bubble - and are likely to lose out.

It's estimated that between 15 and 20 percent of household wealth is tied up in the market - a slowdown in Chinese consumption would have big ramifications for the global economy.