Natural Disaster

[Ian_Lee]

China is a country that is quite safe from natural disasters. Let’s look at the most frequent sources of natural calamities:

(1) Volcano:

Surprisingly there is no volcano on China’s huge land mass. The only traces can be found were some remnants of dead volcanoes in Heilongjiang province. Unlike US, Russia and Japan which all have active volcanoes, hardly any Chinese have any volcanic experience.

(2) Hurricane/typhoon:

Unlike the 4 hurricanes that struck Florida on a row in one month with its rainstorm inflicting damage as north as NYC, the typhoons that originated around Philippines usually just affects Guangdong and Fujian provinces only. Unlike Japan which is always hit by typhoon (just last week Narita airport was forced to close), typhoons hardly even hit Shanghai.

(3) Tornado:

Even though the climate and landscape of China and US are similar, hardly are there any tornadoes in China.

(4) Torrential rain:

In India, every summer torrential rain is brought by the tropical monsoon which causes severe flooding. But the monsoon is blocked by the Himalayas.

(5) Earthquake:

Some of the world’s most devastating earthquake happened in China. But it seems that unlike Japan and California which earthquake happens in an almost certain interval, China’s earthquake coincides with political upheaval (Believe it or not is up to you).. After the Great Tangshan Earthquake which killed 280,000 people (official figure), so far no major earthquake has occurred at densely populated area. In fact, I seldom heard that the property developers in Mainland insert extraordinary earthquake proof building materials as those in Japan do.

For the desert storm that affects Beijing and the flooding of Yellow River and Yangtze, they are more related to man-made disasters rather than mother nature.

In fact, even animals that are as fragile as Panda can survive in China proves that China has a hospitable environment for human as well as animals!

[woodcutter]

Well, the picture isn't quite that rosy.

The Yellow River is a terrible bringer of disaster - always silting up and changing its course.

And the fact that China does not take adequate precautions for earthquakes, which are frequent enough, is not good news!

There are also droughts and dust storms to consider.

[niubi]

if i am not mistaken, there are volcanoes in yunnan province.