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Frankly, no it can't. Hong Kong is an incredibly overpopulated island that is a throughport for thousands if not hundreds of thousands every day.. HK goes into hysteria every time the bird flu comes through.

Beijing is not HK, not even close. Sars will not cause the economic collapse of China, and it surely will not cause the abandonment of its manufacturing. Sars is not instant death, as originally believed, in fact last things I saw on it was mortality for it was under 25% and falling fast the more people infected that were being tracked.

China is a nation of over a BILLION people and has all sorts of true problems... THe government cannot even effectively feed its people, it has a large HIV/AIDS problem because of government denial and coverup, SARS is just one more thing. It will no more bring about the collapse of China economically than the current starvation problems or AIDS problems. A few thousand dead, hell even a few million dead from a disease would not cause the total collapse of the Chinese nation or economy. Wouldn't be a good thing, but belief that it will destroy it as a manufacturing base is naive.

Anyone believing a disease like SARS is going to collapse China in my opinion is incredibly ignorant of just exactly how things are in China day to day. They see pictures of Beijing and think China is a modern nation, reality could not be farther from the truth. China is largely a 3rd world country with a few urban centers.

More people are dying in N. Korea from starvation and in China too daily than SARS will ever kill. Yet the governments are no less stable than they ever were. If anything SARS will force a long overdue reinvestment and policy evaluation of the Chinese public health system, but it won't destroy the nation.