Some countries are the most optimistic in the world about the strength of the global economy while others are the most pessimistic. What gives? 

The tender shoots of spring and budding economic confidence have one thing in common. A late winter frost or an unexpected inflation read can prompt them to disappear as quickly as they came.

The funny thing going on in the wider Asia Pacific region right now is everything has become very Shrödinger Cat-like. There are countries out there that are the most positive about the current economic situation in the world while others that are the least hopeful at the very same time.

Super-optimistic

At least that is what a Visual Capitalist graphic released Friday sourced from a market research firm IPSOS survey seems to show.

The five countries most optimistic about the strength of the global economy in 2024 were in Asia. 

Large Jumps

India posted the biggest jump in confidence, with 85 percent of respondents agreeing with the IPSOS survey question, up from 73 percent in 2023.

China came second, seeing an improvement to 82 percent from 78 percent, followed by very clear assenting majorities in Indonesia (82 percent), the Philippines (74 percent), and Thailand (68 percent).

Japan Comes Last

But the picture was largely similar at the other end the somewhat euphemistic glass-half-full or glass-half-empty scale.

Japan was at the rock-bottom end of the international spectrum, with an unchanged 30 percent of diehard respondents being confident about business matters. South Korea was fourth from last, with the survey result showing a marginal improvement (38 percent, up from 33 percent in 2023).

The China Conundrum

So what gives? There are so many possible takeaways it is difficult to figure out where to start. Let’s leave India out of it as that seems rather obvious. Markets, growth, even population – everything is pointing very significantly in the right direction.

China is where it gets interesting. The domestic economy remains largely in the doldrums with the lingering hurt of the real estate crisis as geopolitical trouble with the US percolates in the background. 

Grass is Greener

It might be related to the actual survey question, which asked respondents how positive they were about the strength of the global economy. That may have prompted those in China to answer that things looked better everywhere than they did on the mainland.

Another takeaway seems to be that respondents traditionally considered to be less industrialized seemed far more positive than those burdened with legacy infrastructure. That seems to hold for much of Europe and the US, and even regionally, with Australia being less positive than the global average.

No Record Nikkei Here

Japan’s case is a curious one. Record Nikkei or not, a clear 70 percent of respondents are just as pessimistic this year as they were last year about things. 

Much of this probably has to do with a continued knee-jerk response to the so-called lost decade of the 1990s and an aging population – but it also might have something to do with geopolitics, given they are sitting right in the first row of everything going on between the US and China.

Korean Misery Quotient

South Korean perceptions seem more logical. The conventional wisdom is that high interest rates and large household debt overhang are keeping the misery quotient high, even prompting a kind of societal PTSD related to the 1997 IMF rescue in certain quarters.

The best explanation for the wide disparity in views across the region, however, might be in its size. 

Not Neighbors

Most in Europe think that Singapore and Hong Kong are close neighbors, and you often draw blank stares when you tell a European that flying between the two is at least an hour longer than a flight from London to Tunisia and that no, you don't know every single thing that is going down in the city-state.

The same thing holds for the region as a whole, given it straddles the Indian Ocean and much of the Pacific Rim. It takes almost thirteen hours to fly between New Delhi and Sydney and it is of little wonder that people living in one or the other have very different takes on just about everything - not just the economy.