The Global Economy: One Year On, Businesses Take Stock

McKinsey's latest Global Economic Conditions Survey makes for fascinating reading. Based on responses from 1,677 company executives from across the world, it confirms the widespread sentiment that, one year on from the meltdown, things are starting to look up - or at least, to appear a little less grim than they did in January. It's worth setting some of the views of company executives alongside those from our global general public polling on the issue that we reported last week. There's a lot of

As we noted, the huge increase in government action to stimulate the global economy appears to have majority support among the general public in many countries around the world. Business executives, perhaps not surprisingly, are more equivocal, with 54% feeling that government should scale back - but not stop - their support for economies. But both seem to agree that government support is essential in the short term if a slide back into crisis is to be averted.

However, both consumers and business share a sense that the high noon of global capitalism may have passed - while the proportion expecting to see greater financial market integration is higher than it was earlier in the year and most expect globalisation to resume, on none of the measures of increased globalisation (more international trade, greater movement of labour across borders etc) do a majority expect to see increased activity over the next five years. Meanwhile, our latest findings show that support for free market economics as the best available system continues to drift down, and now has the backing of only a little more than one in two (55%).

The Chinese results are some of the most striking. Our survey found that the Chinese public was particularly positive, and supportive of what their government had been doing to combat the crisis, and this confidence is reflected in an upbeat assessment by Chinese executives about their economy's prospects, with nearly one in three (30%) expecting Chinese GDP to regain pre-crisis levels by 2010. If they're right, perhaps the much-heralded changing of the guard, with US global economic dominance giving way to a world where the Chinese economy rules the roost, is about to happen sooner than we all thought.