Strong Earthquake Hits Remote Tibet in Western China, Killing Dozens

Source Credit: New York Times 1/7/25

Chinese state media said at least 95 people had died in the 7.1-magnitude quake near an area of religious significance in Tibet. It was felt in neighboring Nepal. Using their hands and shovels in frigid conditions, rescue workers dug through the rubble in the search for survivors after a deadly 7.1-magnitude earthquake toppled houses and jolted people awake in a remote part of Tibet on Tuesday near the northern foothills of Mount Everest.

At least 95 people have died and 130 were injured in the quake, which struck shortly after 9 a.m. at a depth of 6.2 miles in Dingri County, near one of Tibet’s most historic cities, in western China, state media reported. The quake was the country’s deadliest since December 2023, when 151 people were killed in a 6.2-magnitude temblor in the northwestern provinces of Gansu and Qinghai.

China’s state broadcaster reported that more than 1,000 houses had experienced some form of damage in Dingri County, where the average altitude is around 15,000 feet, along the Himalayan border with Nepal. Frantic rescue efforts were being conducted without heavy equipment, underscoring the challenge in delivering resources to the largely isolated communities damaged by the quake. With temperatures in the region dipping as low as 5 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 15 degrees Celsius), rescue workers have a short window in which to locate survivors. It was not immediately clear how many residents had been left homeless.

Several aftershocks were felt in the area, including in Nepal. The quake had a magnitude of 7.1, according to the United States Geological Survey, though it was measured as 6.8 by the China Earthquake Networks Center.

The nearest city to the earthquake’s epicenter was Shigatse, the second-largest city in Tibet, with a population of 640,000. Shigatse is home to the vast, centuries-old Tashilhunpo Monastery, the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, one of the most senior figures in Tibetan Buddhism. State media said that no damage to the monastery had been reported so far.

Tibet is one of the most inaccessible and underdeveloped parts of China. Security has been heightened for decades because of tensions between Beijing and Tibetans, many of whom have long struggled to maintain their religious freedom and cultural identity in a country dominated by Han Chinese. International journalists are forbidden from traveling independently in the region. Scenes of destruction were broadcast on state media and shared on social media. A tourist not far from Shigatse who spoke to The New York Times said she was in her hotel room when the earthquake started shaking her building. She said that the electricity went out and that she and a friend had squatted between the beds. When the shaking stopped, they ran out of the building.

The tourist, who only gave her surname, Xu, shared a video showing several single-story brick buildings with collapsed walls. Video posted on Chinese social media showed streets strewed with rubble, cars crushed by fallen bricks, and roads split open by the shifted ground. Ms. Xu said that she grabbed her down jacket before she ran out. China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, ordered officials to minimize casualties and resettle survivors. The Chinese authorities deployed 3,400 rescuers and more than 340 medical workers for the search effort, and dispatched tents, folding beds, winter coats and quilts, state media reported.

Rescue efforts could be affected by bottlenecks caused by damaged roads, said Robert Barnett, a professor from SOAS University of London, who has visited the region and described it as looking like “vast moonscape.”

“This is harsh, high altitude land,” Mr. Barnett said. “The roads are quite few and susceptible to landslides.”

That said, Mr. Barnett added that there could be new roads connecting some of Dingri County’s most remote border villagesbuilt in recent years to assert China’s sovereignty along its periphery.

The Himalayan region is prone to powerful earthquakes. In 2015, a quake in Nepal with a magnitude of 7.8 killed nearly 9,000 people. In Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, residents streamed out of their homes in the morning as the earthquake rattled buildings. At least two people, one in Kathmandu and another one in Sindhupalchowk, a district north of Kathmandu, sustained minor injuries from the quake, according to the Nepalese police.

Nepal sent more than 2,500 police officers to assess damage and look for victims.

“Based on the magnitude of the earthquake, there could be some damage in mountains of eastern Nepal,” said Lok Bijaya Adhikari, a senior seismologist at Nepal’s National Earthquake Monitoring and Research Center.

Most residents from Nepal’s high mountain regions such as Everest, Makalu, Rolwaling and Kanchenjunga have migrated to lowland areas to avoid the extreme cold of winter.

“Although most people migrate to lower land during winter season, some are still there,” said Ang Tshering Sherpa, the former chief of the Nepal Mountaineering Association. “There’s always risk of avalanche and glacial lake outburst floods after earthquakes.”

When U.S. Diplomats Visit China, Meal Choices Are About More Than Taste Buds

 Visits to China by American officials like Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken can bring fame to local restaurants, as well as scrutiny to the dignitaries.

Beijing beer made with American hops, to highlight the trade relationship between the two countries. Tibetan food, to send a human rights message. Mushrooms with possible hallucinogenic properties, just because they taste good.

Where, what and how American dignitaries eat when they visit China is a serious matter. Choices of restaurants and dishes are rife with opportunities for geopolitical symbolism, as well as controversy and mockery. Chopstick skills — or a lack thereof — can be a sign of cultural competence or illiteracy.

An exorbitantly expensive meal can make an official look out of touch. Too cheap or informal, and you risk appearing undignified. Authenticity, history, cooking technique and taste can all affect the perception of a meal choice.

When Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken started a trip through China on Wednesday, part of the Biden administration’s efforts to stabilize the relationship between the two countries, some on Chinese social media wondered whether he would have time on his visit to stop and try some of the city’s famous xiaolongbao (soup dumplings).

One recommendation that he do so came with something of a political warning: “Eating xiaolongbao is just like handling international relations,” a commentator wrote on Weibo. “If your attention slips even a little, you’ll burn your mouth.”

Mr. Blinken did in fact visit a renowned soup dumpling restaurant that night. It’s unclear how much he considered the symbolism of his dumplings, but by indulging in a traditional popular snack, and by attending a basketball game, the optics suggested there was a more cordial spirit than on the trip he made last year, soon after a Chinese spy balloon drifting across the United States had heightened tensions.

But Mr. Blinken’s eating habits have drawn far less interest than that of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Over two trips, this month and last year, her meals in China attracted so much attention that the state-run Global Times deemed it a form of “food diplomacy.”

Last year, Ms. Yellen made headlines when, at a restaurant in Beijing serving cuisine from Yunnan Province, she ate mushrooms that were revealed to be mildly toxic and could cause hallucinations if not cooked properly.

Ms. Yellen later said that she was not aware of the mushrooms’ potential hallucinogenic properties when she ate them and felt no abnormal effects. Still, the story sparked a brief craze for the mushrooms in China.

This month, during a four-day trip to China, Ms. Yellen visited a famed Cantonese restaurant in Guangzhou, and a Sichuan restaurant in Beijing. The dishes she ordered were quickly posted online, drawing broad approval from commenters for the variety and affordability of the dishes ordered, her chopstick skills and the fact that she and her team sat among other diners instead of in a private room.

The dishes Ms. Yellen and her team ordered were classic meals from their respective regions and were not modified to foreign tastes, according to Fuchsia Dunlop, a London-based cook and food writer who specializes in Chinese cuisine.

“They haven’t chosen really expensive, show-off dishes and ingredients,” Ms. Dunlop said, speaking about the Sichuan meal. “This is very much what everyday people in Sichuan like to eat. This menu was chosen for flavor, not prestige.”

According to a Treasury Department spokeswoman, the department generally solicits suggestions from staff at the local embassy for restaurant recommendations when Ms. Yellen travels. Then, Ms. Yellen will research the restaurants herself and make the final decision.

On occasion, specific establishments will be chosen to convey a diplomatic message, the spokeswoman added. She cited Ms. Yellen’s visit this month to a brewery in Beijing that uses American hops, aimed to highlight the significance of American agricultural exports to China.

Some restaurants where Ms. Yellen has dined at have capitalized on her fame, like the Yunnan restaurant where she ate the mushrooms, which released a set menu based on what she ordered, called the “God of Money” menu, a nod to her position as Treasury Secretary. Ms. Yellen isn’t the first American dignitary to turn Chinese restaurants into overnight sensations. In 2011, a visit by then-Vice President Joe Biden to a Beijing noodle restaurant sent its business skyrocketing, according to Chinese state media, and led the restaurant to create a “Biden set” noodle menu. In 2014, after Michelle Obama visited a hot pot restaurant in the city of Chengdu, the restaurant said it would create an “American First Lady” set menu. Articles in Chinese media noted approvingly that Mrs. Obama was able to handle the spicy soup, which was not toned down for a foreign palate.

Her visit to a Tibetan restaurant in the same city, however, attracted controversy, and her staff at the time readily acknowledged that the venue had been chosen deliberately to show support for the rights and religious liberties of Tibetans in China.

But for Mrs. Obama’s husband and other U.S. presidents, Chinese cuisine served at official state banquets is often Americanized or customized to better suit a foreign palette.

In 2009, President Barack Obama was served a Chinese-style beef steak and baked fish, according to Chinese state media, and in 2017, President Trump ate dishes including kung pao chicken and stewed boneless beef in tomato sauce. Both meals finished with fruit ice cream, which is highly atypical of traditional Chinese meals.

But even those meals may hint at an international trend, Ms. Dunlop said. Mr. Obama’s menu contained “very safe, conservative choices that would be appealing to foreigners,” she said, while Mr. Trump’s menu was slightly more contemporary and showed off more Chinese cooking techniques.That shift, Ms. Dunlop said, “may reflect China feeling a bit more confident with Westerners’ familiarity with real Chinese food” in 2017 versus 2009.

Source Credit: NYT

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War in Ukraine Has China Cashing In

On China’s snowy border with Russia, a dealership that sells trucks has seen its sales double in the past year thanks to Russian customers. China’s exports to its neighbor are so strong that Chinese construction workers built warehouses and 20-story office towers at the border this summer.

The border town Heihe is a microcosm of China’s ever closer economic relationship with Russia. China is profiting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has led Russia to switch from the West to China for purchases of everything from cars to computer chips.

Russia, in turn, has sold oil and natural gas to China at deep discounts. Russian chocolates, sausages and other consumer goods have become plentiful in Chinese supermarkets. Trade between Russia and China surpassed $200 billion in the first 11 months of this year, a level the countries had not expected to reach until 2024. Russia’s war in Ukraine has also gotten an image boost from China. State media disseminates a steady diet of Russian propaganda in China and around the world. Russia is so popular in China that social media influencers flock to Harbin, the capital of China’s northernmost province in the east, Heilongjiang, to pose in Russian garb in front of a former Russian cathedral there. Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, and Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, have made numerous public demonstrations of the nations’ close ties. Mr. Xi visited Harbin in early September and declared Heilongjiang to be China’s “gateway to the north.” China’s exports to Russia soared 69 percent in the first 11 months of this year compared with the same period in 2021, before the invasion of Ukraine.

“Maintaining and developing China-Russian relations well is a strategic choice made by both sides on the basis of the fundamental interests of the two peoples,” Mr. Xi said as he met in Beijing on Wednesday with the Russian prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin. China has filled a critical import need for Russia, which many European and American companies shunned after Mr. Putin started his war in February 2022. China has pursued its role as a substitute supplier of goods despite risking its close economic ties with many European nations.

Before the Ukraine invasion, leaders of Germany, France and other European countries mostly set aside differences with China over issues like human rights to emphasize commerce. Chinese officials, for their part, insist that they should not be forced to choose between Europe and Russia, and that China should be free to do business with both.

The biggest winners for China from the surge in trade with Russia have been its vehicle manufacturers. On a recent afternoon in Heihe, lines of diesel freight trucks with decals of snarling bears, a symbol of Russia, on their drivers’ doors waited to be driven across an Amur River bridge to Russia. The bridge is new, and so are the trucks, which wore Genlyon badges, a brand that belongs to the state-owned Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation. The company, known as SAIC, also makes car brands like MG, acquired from Britain.

The sales helped China overtake Japan this year as the world’s largest car exporter. German manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz and BMW used to be strong sellers in Russia, but they have pulled out in response to sanctions on the country by Europe, the United States and their allies.

Sales of luxury cars in Russia have plunged, contributing to a decline in the overall size of the country’s car market, which is now less than half the size of Germany’s. But lower-middle-class and poor Russian families, whose members make up the bulk of the soldiers fighting the war, have stepped up purchases of affordable Chinese cars, according to Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. One reason, Mr. Gabuev said, are the death and disability payments that the Russian government and insurers are making to families of Russian soldiers — as much as $90,000 in the case of a death.

Russia has not released the number of its killed and wounded, but the United States estimates the total at 315,000.

Russians buy almost exclusively internal combustion cars. China has a surplus of them because its consumers have shifted swiftly to electric cars. And the land border means China can transport cars to Russia by rail, an important factor because China lacks its own fleet of transoceanic carrier ships for vehicle exports.

The result? Chinese carmakers have grabbed 55 percent of the Russian market, according to GlobalData Automotive. They had 8 percent in 2021.

“Never before have we seen automakers from a single country gobble up so much market share so quickly — the Chinese came into a windfall,” said Michael Dunne, an Asia automotive consultant in San Diego.

The United States has strongly warned China against sending armaments to Russia, and has not yet uncovered evidence that it is doing so. But some civilian equipment that China is selling to Russia, like drones and trucks, also has military uses.

Beijing’s embrace of Russia has also provided a modest but timely boon to China’s construction industry. The economy has struggled to heal from the scars left by almost three years of stringent “zero Covid” measures.

The real estate market is in crisis across China. Tens of millions of apartments are empty or unfinished, and new projects have stalled — depriving the construction sector of work that has long powered jobs.

“Many buildings have been built, but without anyone living inside,” said Zhang Yan, a wooden door vendor in Heihe. But some laborers are finding work on the 2,600-mile Russian border, which until this year had a dearth of truck stops, customs processing centers, rail yards, pipelines and other infrastructure. Construction moved ahead briskly over the summer in cities like Heihe, although it has paused for the frigid winter.

Pipelines are needed for one of the most crucial commodities traded between the two countries: energy.

Cheap Russian energy, bypassing sanctions imposed by the West, has helped Chinese factories compete in global markets even as their manufacturing rivals elsewhere, notably in Germany, have faced sharply higher energy costs for much of the past two years.

Russia has been ramping up natural gas shipments through its Power of Siberia pipeline to China, and has been negotiating to build a second one that would carry gas from fields that served Europe before the Ukraine war. China and Russia also agreed less than three weeks before the Ukraine war to build a third, smaller pipeline that would carry gas from easternmost Russia to northeastern China, and construction on that project has raced ahead.

The newest pipeline will cross land that Russia seized from China in the late 1850s and never returned. As recently as the 1960s, China and the Soviet Union were quarreling over the placement of their border and their troops skirmished. In a village near Heihe, a larger-than-life-size statue of an imperial Chinese general still glares across the Amur River.

Today Russia and China are building bridges and pipelines that cross it.

Source Credit: New York Times