A lot of people like to think the US economy is a beautiful and unique snowflake. Granted, some of that “unique” juggernaut-ness comes in the form of massive amounts of leverage, government largesses and the ability to blow bubbles in financial markets, but there you have it.

It turns out, though, China may be just like us. Their banks have been cranking out record quantities of loans and their capital ratios have gone south in a hurry (of course, it doesn’t help that they raised the reserve requirements a week ago). And now, Liu Mingkang has to put on his Warren G hat again, and regulate:

Chinese regulators asked some of the nation’s banks to limit lending after they failed to meet requirements including those for capital, said Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission.

The CBRC hasn’t asked all Chinese banks to halt lending, Liu said in an interview in Hong Kong today. He didn’t identify which banks were told to limit loans.

“We have a number of regulatory requirements to ensure prudent supervision,” Liu said. “For those that failed to meet these standards, we told them to limit lending.”

Premier Wen Jiabao yesterday said China will “well manage” the pace of credit growth after banks extended a record 9.59 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) in new loans last year to help finance the nation’s 4 trillion yuan stimulus package, stoking concerns of asset bubbles and worsening credit quality. China last week raised the proportion of deposits banks must set aside as reserves for the first time in 18 months.

Allegedly, lending for January had already exceeded 1 trillion yen, putting it on pace to be increasing way faster than last year, or something. As to whether banks will be able to lend in the future, apparently the requirements will be different for different banks (hey, does that sound familiar?) and they have more than ten indicators of bank health over there that they use to determine whether banks’ ability to lend will be curtailed or not. Ten. (In the apres-Glass-Steagall days, that seems like a lot.)

Is it really bubble, bubble, toil and trouble for China? David Roche on CNBC:

“There are two great bubbles in the world. One is Bernanke’s Fed printing all that liquidity and the other is China where we saw an increase in credit last year of 25-30% of GDP,” David Roche from Independent Strategy said Wednesday. China’s monetary tightening move is not “surprising” as “China’s credit bubble is coming to an end” this year, he added.

Oil is moving down, but it sounds like what you really want to watch is the dried chili peppers market, which will likely start foundering Dutch tulip-style if the rumors are true. (No position in dried chili peppers.)