Pick a number, any number. For Asia, they are all likely to be bad. Lau Wong-fat, the unfortunate Hong Kong official designated to select a fortune-telling stick on the city’s behalf during recent lunar new year celebrations, plucked out the number 27, seen by those present as the unluckiest possible omen for the year. A fortune teller at Che Kung temple, shrouded in incense and consulting the heavens for inspiration, declared it meant Hong Kong could not isolate itself from global economic turmoil.

But no such master of divination was needed. Not only Hong Kong, which as a port city and financial centre thrives on its openness to fast-dwindling world trade, but the whole of Asia is in trouble. All over the region, particularly in manufacturing-heavy south-east and north-east Asia, government statisticians have been summoning up evil-eye numbers of their own.