Foreign business confidence in a stable China has been shaken.

The first is that both consumer and business confidence are running at nearly record highs across Europe.

"Every day the guns are silent, business confidence goes up."

The survey found that in the final three months of last year, business confidence and optimism fell.

A growing number of experts worry that business confidence may remain low for some time, even if the war ends quickly.

Higher profits may improve business confidence and raise the expected future return on any project.

Last week, business confidence in countries such as Germany was on the increase.

There were still reasons to worry, though - business confidence fell to its lowest level in nearly two years.

But business confidence has increased and European economic officials said today that they expected modest growth in the first quarter of this year.

"It's not that business confidence is shooting up through the roof."