The cover of HSBC’s latest report on Asia’s economic health sports a picture of a stunt motorcycle rider floating in mid-air, perhaps 50ft off the ground. The message would have been unthinkable only nine months ago: Asia is soaring as its emerging economic superpowers enjoy a post-crisis bounce that is exceeding all expectations.

Growth in China will be 7.5 per cent this year, economists estimate, boosted by a $585 billion (£360 billion) fiscal stimulus package. Beijing has splurged on everything from new railways to vouchers handed to consumers to buy Chinese-made cars and fridges. It seems to be getting its money’s worth: in May, car sales rose by nearly 24 per cent by value and housing sales rose by 75 per cent. For 2010, growth in China is being pencilled in at 8.4 per cent.

Compare those figures with the dreary GDP growth estimates for the United States and Europe — of 1.9 per cent and 0.1 per cent, respectively — and it is easy to see why investors are starting to look to the East once more.

Across Asia, similar stories abound, as countries spared having to bail out crippled banking systems put money to work building roads and filling shoppers’ wallets. Buffetted by the credit crunch, India has fallen back on an enviably vast cushion of domestic demand that has been pumped up by generous government payouts to poor consumers. The economy is expected to grow by nearly 6 per cent this year and 7 per cent next year.

In Indonesia, household spending accelerated in the first three months of the year by 5.8 per cent — the fastest pace in a decade — lifted by government handouts in an election year. Singapore may have just suffered its worst recession, but the recovery is, thanks to buoyant regional trade, widely expected to be “V” shaped, with a 6 per cent contraction in 2009 followed by a 5 per cent expansion in 2010. Thailand and Taiwan are being tipped to make similar swings from recession to growth.

Hope abounds even in the most unlikely places. Pakistan may not be the most enticing roadshow destination for investment managers, but the country has doubled its foreign exchange reserves in the past nine months, albeit with the help of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In Sri Lanka, the end of Asia’s longestrunning civil war has boosted hopes of a lucrative peace dividend.

As HSBC notes in the very first line of its Asia report: “It almost appears too good to be true.”

If there is a fly in the ointment, it is Japan. Wholesale prices fell at a record pace of 6.6 per cent in June, figures showed last week, indicating that demand remains moribund in an economy ravaged by an exports slump.

The IMF recently raised its 2009 growth forecast for Asia’s developing economies from 4.8 per cent to 5.5 per cent. However, it said that “recent acceleration in growth is likely to peter out unless there is a recovery in advanced economies”.

Asia veterans note that the size of the region’s stimulus packages have powered it through a global storm. China’s is now worth about 4 per cent of the nation’s GDP, while the equivalent figure in the United States is about 2 per cent. The question is whether the recovery continues once the stimulus ends.

Fresh clouds are gathering. Inflation is expected to return across Asia as commodity prices rise. Higher oil costs could also weigh on trade balances. Fiscal imprudence is also a concern. India, for example, has revealed a budget that splurged on spending while cutting tax. It is gambling that it can ride out the global downturn by stoking domestic demand, a risky strategy for a poor country whose government debt is approaching 10 per cent of GDP and whose sovereign debt rating is already under huge pressure.

Asia is soaring, but, like the stuntman on that HSBC cover, some nations may yet face a bumpy landing.

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