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Miracle in China: Battle Against Sars 2003 is an arduous year for the global economy. As the businessmen and economists were still evaluating the impacts caused by the war in Iraq, another disaster supplanted the war as a new challenge to the world, which was the deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or Sars, epidemic that has leapt to four continents and seventeen countries. For all the panic that Sars has generated, it has undoubtedly undermined China’s and Hong Kong’s economy. According to the figures of “Far Eastern Economic Review” , the estimated economic loss of China and Hong Kong were US$2.2 billion and US$1.7 billion respectively. Actually, most of us may not discover that business opportunities have been brought along with the diseases as well. Howsoever, both of the threats and opportunities brought by the epidemic should not be neglected. Obviously, hotels and international air carriers have already taken an enormous hit, which was a huge problem for Hong Kong, but a minor one for China. Tourism is the second largest invisible earnings of Hong Kong. Its earnings together with that of other tourism related industries, e.g. retailing, catering and hotel industry, account for 10% of the total GDP of Hong Kong. As a result, Hong Kong was hammered severely when the epidemic ravaged the world, given its high exposure to collapsing retail and tourism sectors. Originally, March was regarded as the peak season of tourism, but the outbreak of Sars fundamentally turned the opportunity into threat. Government of the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries warned its citizens not to travel to the infected places like Hong Kong, China and Singapore, etc. Therefore, the number of tourists dropped dramatically and the totally loss was estimated to be $2 billion Hong Kong dollar approximately. Actually, the situation in China was more or less the same. The occupancy rate of hotel dropped to 10-20% merely. According to the figures of China International Travel Services (CITS), 50% of the confirmed tours has been cancelled or delayed. The problem was not limited to outbound travel only, but also the internal travel within China. People in China did not want to travel to the province like Guang Dong although it is a well-known tourist attraction. Anyway, the hit of tourism in China was not that serious than that of Hong Kong due to their differences in economic structure. Due to the suffering of tourism, airline industry was harmed directly. Since the “911” Incident, the future of airline industry is unforeseeable. The situation was even worsened due to the increase in oil price caused by the war in Iraq.
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