THE year 2003 has been a tough, but productive, one for Asia. The SARS and the Iraq war kept us on the defensive in the first half of the year. It was really not until the fourth quarter when the optimism we had been heralding finally appeared.
One is naturally tempted to extrapolate this buoyant optimism into 2004. The US economy is finding a new lease of life with investment demand – crucial to the recovery's sustainability – increasing significantly, Japan is doing very well. And it is difficult to find anybody saying anything negative about China's rise at the moment – unless you happen to walk in the corridors of the US Senate where “stolen” jobs top the agenda. Only Europe seems to disappoint repeatedly. The good news is that none of this looks likely to change in 2004.
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