Economic aftershocks of the devastation in Japan are rolling through Asia. It is here, among Japan's neighbors, that the reverberations of the catastrophe are being felt hardest.

Automakers in Thailand are slowing production. South Korean electronics manufacturers face shortages of critical parts. Thousands of Japanese have canceled trips to Taiwan. Panic buying has driven up prices of Japanese cameras in China, while Indian policymakers brace for higher oil prices.

The 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami that laid waste to Japan's industrial northeast on March 11 and triggered an unfolding crisis at a crippled nuclear power plant has exacted a terrible human toll with estimates of more than 10,000 dead and hundreds of thousands homeless. It might also undermine Japan — and China — as manufacturing bastions as the catastrophe gives global companies further reason to spread suppliers over more countries to avoid reliance on a handful of production powerhouses.

"Even before the Japan disaster, there was a sense that many multinationals had become too dependent on a single source of production," said Frederic Neumann, HBSC's co-head of Asian economics research. "The broad trend to diversify production will not just affect Japan, it will affect China. China's production has become very concentrated."

South Korea, a manufacturing force in its own right, has been among the first to shudder as Japanese suppliers grappled with damaged factories and power shortages.

Profits at Taiwanese electronics firms will likely slump in the second quarter due to shortages of Japanese components, said Alex Huang, an analyst at Taipei's Mega Securities Corp.

In mainland China, businesses have already started looking for replacement markets for the some $100 billion of exports they ship to Japan annually.

So far, speculators have been the clearest winners.

Shoppers in China stripped salt from supermarket shelves, panicked by the unlikely possibility that the salt supply would be contaminated by radioactive fallout or in the false belief that table salt protects against radiation illness.

Some then sold the salt in store parking lots for ten times the original price.

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