BEIJING -- In recent months, bearish sentiment about the Chinese economy has surged, owing largely to three conjectures.

BEIJING—More than half of China's millionaires are either considering emigrating or have already taken steps to do so, according to a survey that builds on similar findings earlier this year, highlighting worries among the business elite about their quality of life and financial prospects, despite the country's fast-paced growth.

Stephen S. Roach, a member of the faculty at Yale University, is Non-Executive Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and author of The Next Asia.

TOKYO – In Japan, memorial services for the dead are normally held 49 days after their passing. The bereaved mourn throughout this period. The number of victims of the earthquake and tsunami that assaulted the Tohoku region of northeast Japan has now reached around 30,000, if those who are still missing are included. This was the largest natural disaster to strike Japan in its history, and the entire nation has been in mourning.

Japan faces a tremendous challenge as it seeks to recover from the effects of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The most immediate challenge, of course, is the containment of radiation leaks from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant. But ripples from the disaster will continue for some time, and Japan's recovery from the worst natural disaster in the nation's history will be costly and long.

What's going well, what's not, and where to from here are the hot topics of conversation in China this week at the National People's Congress. Every five years, the government reviews the progress of the past five-year economic plan, and debates and affirms the plan for the next five years. In three separate reports delivered to the entire Congress of about three thousand representatives, the government leadership establishes the broad outlines of the budget and its economic priorities. This time around, the five-year work plan is striking for several reasons: the high degree of continuity from five years ago, the push by Beijing for Chinese companies to assert themselves globally, the strong hand of the state in areas of the economy considered integral to social stability, and the potential for serious debate over several of the redistributive aspects of the plan.

SINGAPORE — At first glance, short-term economic prospects for Asia are positive: Economies are expected to continue to grow steadily this year, albeit at a slightly slower pace than in 2010, making the region a darling in the eyes of international investors, who are desperately looking for improved corporate earnings and higher returns on stocks.

THE town of Alpha in Queensland, Australia, has only 400 residents, including one part-time ambulance driver and a lone policeman, according to Mark Imber of Waratah Coal, an exploration firm. But over the next few years it should quintuple in size, thanks to an A$7.5 billion ($7.3 billion) investment by his company and the Metallurgical Corporation of China, a state-owned firm that serves China’s mining and metals industry.

BEIJING – A major new target in the “Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development” that China just unveiled is to boost the growth rate for household (disposable) income so that it equals the growth rate of the country’s GDP. The reason is simple: over the past 10 years or so, China’s household income grew more slowly than GDP, making it a smaller and smaller proportion of total national income.

The past two years have been tough on China-oriented Western economists. China's archaic mercantilism, tight capital controls, over-regulated financial sector, managed exchange rate and, above all, its need to purchase and sterilize massive inflows of foreign exchange were, according the theorists, leading the country to economic calamity.