Magnitude 5.5 Earthquake in Shandong Province, China.

The China Earthquake Networks Center recorded a Magnitude 5.5 Earthquake at a depth of about 10 km, beneath Pingyuan County in Shandong Province, slightly after 2.30 am local time on Sunday 6 August 2023 local time (slightly after 6.30 pm on Saturday 5 August GMT). Twenty one people are reported to have been injured by the event, which caused 126 buildings to collapse and rail services in the region to be termporarily halted, but there are no reports of any fatalities. 

Damage to a farmhouse in Pingyuan County, China, caused by an Earthquake on Sunday 6 August 2023. CCTV/AP.

Earthquakes are common in west and southwest China, where the Eurasian Plate is being compressed by the impact of the Indian Plate from the south, but much less common in the east and centre of the country. However southeastern China is in fact dominated by a series of tectonic blocks, annealed onto the Eurasian Plate during the Triassic. Shandong Province lies in northeastern China, on the eastern margin of the North China Block, which is being pushed eastward by the motion of the Tibetan Block, pushing it into the Amurian Plate, which underlies parts of northeast China, the Russian Far East and Korea.

Tectonic map of Asia, showing relationships between the India–Asia collision, escape of Indonesian and South China blocks seaward, and extension from Siberia to the Pacific margin. (Note also the opening of back-arc basins including the Sea of Japan and the South China Sea, and extension in the Bohai Basin and eastern part of the NCC.) The North China Craton is also strongly influenced by Pacific and palaeo-Pacific subduction, perhaps also inducing extension in the eastern NCC. The palaeo Pacific and Pacific subduction zones developed in the Mesozoic, and also contributed to the hydration of the subcontinental lithospheric mantle beneath the NCC. Kusky et al. (2007).

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