It's not all bad you know

Before we all start to commit ritual self disemboweling with a butter knife, let's not forget that there is some good news out there. OK, Japanese exports may be down 49% on February 2008. That's actually pretty bad.

But, how's this for a series of feel better reports?

1. Vietnam actually eked out a 2% increase in exports says the FT. Somewhere else, they say this was down to strong gold and rice shipments (somebody's having some fancy rice pudding).
2. Bloomberg reports that a respected adviser to China's central bank says that the country's economy "will recover strongly in the second and third quarters as a 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) stimulus package takes effect".
3. Normandy Madden over at Ad Age China tells us that "China's ad market grew 9% to $27.8 Billion in 2008".

So, hurrah for China. Hurrah for Vietnam. I guess Marxism with special Asian awfully capitalistic looking characteristics is the way to go. Perhaps the new musical version of Das Kapital is for me after all. It's butter knives down, little red books up and on with the dancing shoes.

Update: More in the same vein from Marketing which reports that Carat is predicting growth in China's advertising market in 2009, admittedly an anaemic 4.8% compared to 19% in 2008 and an anticipated bounceback to 7.2% in 2010. This compares to an expected fall across Asia this year of 0.8%.