(TibetanReview.net, Apr08’25) – A team of Chinese seismologists have published a study last month warning of a heightened risk of devastating earthquakes – like the one with magnitude 7.9 which struck Myanmar on Mar 28 – in and around the Tibetan Plateau region, reported the scmp.com Apr 6. The question is whether this will lead China to rethink the world’s biggest hydroelectric dam it has given the go ahead to be built on the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet’s Metog County, near the border with India. It is known to be a seismically active area and prone to landslides.
The study was published after the devastating 7.1-magnitude Jan 7 earthquake in Tibet’s Mt Everest county of Dingri, and days before the Myanmar quake which flattened buildings and killed thousands of people.
The peer-reviewed study, led by senior engineer Zhu Hongbin with the Beijing Earthquake Agency, was stated to have been published on Mar 20 in the Journal of Geodesy and Geodynamics, an academic publication run by the China Earthquake Administration.
The seismologists have analysed around 150 years of seismic data – from 1879 to the present day – to identify six major earthquake “active periods” in “China” and adjacent regions.
Each period was stated to correlate with shifts in the Earth’s rotational speed – measured through changes in the length of a day (LOD) – and corresponding tectonic stress realignments.
An active period from 1897 to 1912 was found to have clustered 12 major quakes along the Pamir-Baikal seismic belt in East Asia.
Subsequent phases were stated to have migrated clockwise: to the northeastern Tibetan Plateau (1920-1934), its southeastern edge (1946-1957), Yunnan and north China (1970-1976), and the Bayan Har block on the eastern Tibetan Plateau (2001-2015).
And the current phase, the sixth, centres on the Bayan Har block’s periphery, with researchers cautioning that stress fields may now pivot northeast, increasing the risk in Sichuan, Yunnan and the Himalayan front.
“The region may currently be entering the nascent phase of a new seismic active period,” Zhu’s team was stated to have written.
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The study was stated to highlight accumulating strain in locked segments of the Longmenshan Fault in “southwest China”, which includes Tibet and was the site of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, as well as the Eastern Himalayan Syntaxis, where GPS measurements show India’s northward push accelerating.
The Myanmar quake was stated to have occurred during a transitional LOD phase, which happened to fall in one of the predicted high-risk areas due to heightened northeast-oriented stress.
Satellite data was stated to reveal a 500km-long (310-mile-long) rupture zone extending all the way south to Thailand, with thrust mechanisms consistent with these forces.
Striking just 280km (174 miles) from the Tibetan Plateau’s southeastern edge, the Myanmar earthquake has intensified scrutiny of Zhu’s findings, the report said.
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However, China may rest its decision to continue with the Yarlung Tsanpo world’s biggest dam project with sceptics of Zhu and his team’s report. They have argued that global seismic activity in 2025 remains below historical averages.
“There’s no evidence Earth has entered a shaking mode,” Gao Mengtan, a senior researcher with the China Earthquake Administration, was quoted as having told China’s state media on Mar 31.
“Seismic activities this year are actually quieter than before,” he has maintained.
Meanwhile, the scmp.com report noted that the Myanmar disaster was followed by smaller tremors which rattled Tibet, Xinjiang (East Turkestan) and Guangdong the week before, unnerving residents.