In the towns and villages around Mianzhu, everything speaks of collapse. The trotters and snouts of crushed pigs poke out from the remains of pulverised buildings. Irrigation trenches are either split and leaking or blocked and dry. Factories and mines are silent - their operations wrecked and their labour forces dead or evacuated.

In the aftermath of the earthquake in the province of Sichuan nearly two weeks ago, terraced farms have been overrun by landslides, and the Chinese Government is finding it harder and harder to quell panic that floods may erupt from the dozens of “quake lakes” that have formed in the hills.

Some analysts fear that this physical collapse could herald a wider economic collapse. The sight of Mianzhu and a dozen similarly desolate large towns nearby suggests plenty of causes for concern.

With Sichuan being China's biggest producer of pigs and a leading grower of rice and vegetables, damage to agriculture could trigger surges in inflation. The destruction of industry and thousands of small businesses in the province could also trigger a regional downturn. A mass exodus of labour and a refugee crisis may take years to recover from.

Others have played play down the macroeconomic impact: Sichuan is big, but so is China. The five million displaced people are only a tiny fraction of the national workforce. The area most affected by the quake has some heavier industry, but nothing whose absence will knock the overall growth picture out of shape.

The earthquake will barely register on global energy and commodity prices: the province produces 20percent of China's natural gas, 3percent of its aluminium and 3percent of its coal, but the quake will not reduce those contributions significantly.

Nearly two weeks since the quake, analysts are most worried about the longer-term impact on agriculture. The devastation of farmland has hit an important producer province during an inflationary phase, with food prices already extremely sensitive. One in ten hogs consumed in the country comes from Sichuan.

Pork prices, which doubled last year, have been the prime culprit behind the country's soaring consumer price index. Sichuan is also among the top five regional producers of rice, oilseeds and vegetables. Prices in food markets across China could rise this week, CLSA Asia researchers said.

For now, the impact appears modest: 800,000 pigs have died, but that represents less than 1percent of Sichuan's annual production. Most of the province's agriculture is not in the worst-affected region and of the four big pork processors in Sichuan, only a few plants remain closed.

A far more serious concern is what could unfold over the summer, Arthur Kroeber, of Dragonomics Research & Advisory, said, particularly as the July rains pour down on crippled infrastructure. River blockages could starve large parts of the region of the water they depend on for irrigation, he noted.

What the Chinese Government calls “temporarily stable” dams could break and cause massive flooding. “It is theoretical at the moment, but either scenario could be devastating for crops,” Mr Kroeber said. “Food prices were expected to moderate over the summer, but that could be thrown way off by events.”

The earthquake could also hurt the banking industry in Sichuan. Over the weekend the nation's financial regulator declared that as part of the unprecedented relief efforts, bad loans created by the earthquake would be written off - a sum thought to represent about $1 billion (£504 million).

The regulator has also demanded that the credit-card debts of the 60,000 who died in the quake be written off, too.

However, some are beginning to speculate that the quake - despite the immediate horrors of its aftermath - may act as an economic stimulant to the region.

Having allowed unprecedented domestic and foreign media access to the quake, permitting the story to run unbroken on every television channel for nearly two weeks, the Government will be under pressure to support the rebuilding of the region, political analysts believe.

That could entail massive construction and infrastructure spending in the coming years.

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