The Shanghai Composite Index (SSEC) plunged 8.5% to start trading for the week. The ripple effects were wide and far-reaching even as arguments continue floating that the collapse in China's stock market matters little outside of China and does not truly reflect on economic conditions in the country.

apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook summed up a lot of the soothing words to-date during last week's earnings conference call (from the Seeking Alpha transcript of AAPL's Q3 2015 earnings conference call):

“…we remain extremely bullish on China and we're continuing to invest. Nothing that's happened has changed our fundamental view that China will be Apple's largest market at some point in the future. It's true, as you point out, that the equity markets have recently been volatile. This could create some speed bumps in the near term. But to put it in context, which I think is important, despite that volatility in the Chinese market, they're still up 90% over the last year, and they're up 20% year-to-date, and so these kind of numbers are numbers I think all of us would love.

Also, the stock market participation among Chinese household is fairly narrow. And the stock ownership is very concentrated in a few people who put what appears to be a smaller portion of their wealth in the market than we might. And so I think generally this has been, at least as we see it, maybe it's not true for other businesses, that this worry is probably overstated. And so we're not changing anything. We have the pedal to the metal on getting to 40 stores mid next year. As we had talked about before, we're continuing to expand the indirect channel as well.”

Cook went on to quote a McKinsey study that estimates China's middle class will grow from 14% to 54% of households from 2012 to 2022. I now put such estimates right up there with the iron ore miners who continue to lean on very bullish assumptions about China's steel consumption over the next 10, 20+ years. They are using these forecasts to help them look past the current acceleration in the 4-year long collapse in commodities.