At least 50 people have been killed and 60 injured after a magnitude 7.1 quake struck southern Tibet on January 7, 2026.
The earthquake occurred at 9.05 a.m. local time, with its epicentre located in Tingri, a rural county that serves as the northern gateway to the Everest region, the Hindustan Times reported.
The Tibetan Plateau is the highest landscape on the planet due to the collision between the Indian and Eurasian tectonic or crustal plates almost 55 million years ago.
The Indian plate continues to subduct or go under the Eurasian plate at roughly 5 cm/year, pushing the Himalayas, formed by the collision, higher.
However, new research published last year highlighted something else: A brand-new fault in the middle of Tibet, which is making it ‘extrude’ or move further east.
In their research paper titled Previously unrecognized, 1000 km-long Qixiang Co fault governs eastward escape of central Tibet, authors Kang Li, Marie-Luce Chevalier, Paul Tapponnier, Xiwei Xu, Shiguang Wang and Wenjun Kang used meter-resolution satellite data and field measurements to document “the ∼1000 km-long, ∼ENE to E-trending sinistral fault, the Qixiang Co fault (QXCF)”.
In geological terms, ‘sinistral’ refers to the left-handed movement of blocks on the other side of a fault. Conversely, ‘dextral’ refers to the right-handed movement of blocks on the other side of a fault.
The researchers further found that the QXCF “wholly crosses central Tibet to connect the Ganzi-Xianshuihe fault in eastern Tibet with the Gyaring Co fault and Tangra Yum Co rift in central/southern Tibet”.
They described QXCF as the “single most important tectonic boundary across the Qiangtang terrane”. It contributed predominantly to the “large-scale eastward escape of central Tibet”, the researchers added.
Meanwhile, another paper published in April 2023 pointed to something else: The possibility of China experiencing more earthquakes in the years ahead.
China is divided into five seismic zones: The Northeast seismic zone, North China seismic zone, South China seismic zone, the Xinjiang seismic zone and Tibet Plateau seismic zone.
China’s mainland and its surrounding areas are further divided into 29 seismic belts.
“The occurrence of large earthquakes in China’s mainland fluctuates with time, with large earthquakes relatively frequent in some periods and relatively infrequent in others. Based on the seismic catalogs and paleoearthquakes of Lv et al. (2016), Shao et al. (2020) analyzed the time sequences of large earthquakes, and found that the seismicity level of large earthquakes in China’s mainland is relatively high in recent years, and that the seismicity trends of large earthquakes may not change within a short time,” the paper titled Seismic Hazard Analysis of China’s Mainland Based on a New Seismicity Model, noted.