Washington, Oct 31 — China's efforts to harness immense natural power are unfolding in a region prone to considerable geological instability, a report has stated.
It noted that the October 22 earthquake underscores that tectonic activity is not merely a feature of the region's geological past but remains an active threat, posing risks that must be factored into the design and operation of major infrastructure projects.
“On October 22, 2026, a powerful magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Baqing County in Nagqu, Tibet, killing at least 16 people, injuring dozens, and destroying hundreds of homes. According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), the earthquake resulted from movement along a normal fault within the Tibetan Plateau, where the continuing collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates creates enormous geological stresses. The plateau is still being pushed upward and stretched eastward and westward,” according to a report in the American magazine ‘The National Interest'.
“This was no isolated event. Since 1900, the Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding regions have experienced 29 earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater. The devastating 1950 Assam-Tibet earthquake reached magnitude 8.6 and killed 4,800 people, while the 2010 Yushu earthquake in neighbouring Qinghai claimed more than 2,500 lives. The latest earthquake is another reminder that the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau remain among the world’s most geologically unstable regions,” it noted.
The latest earthquake struck less than two months after another major disaster in the Himalayas. On August 26, a massive mass of glacier ice and rock collapsed near the Nepal-Tibet border, triggering a destructive surge of water, mud and boulders, the report mentioned.
It stated that the two disasters, one triggered by seismic activity and the other by the collapse of glacier ice and rock, highlight different aspects of the same underlying vulnerability.
They also raise serious concerns about the ability of China's massive hydropower complex under construction on the Yarlung Tsangpo River in southeastern Tibet to withstand such extreme natural events.
“Although neither disaster occurred at the project site, both illustrate the geological and environmental hazards that major infrastructure throughout the Himalayas must confront. The question matters because the Yarlung Tsangpo becomes the Brahmaputra upon entering India and eventually flows into Bangladesh, linking the safety of China’s upstream engineering projects to the lives and livelihoods of millions downstream,” the report detailed.
“China’s project, launched in July 2025, is among the most ambitious hydropower undertakings in history. With an estimated investment of 1.2 trillion yuan (about $170 billion), it involves five cascading hydropower stations designed to exploit the river’s extraordinary energy potential before it enters India, where it becomes the Brahmaputra River, which flows through Bangladesh to the Bay of Bengal,” it added.
The report cited research published in 2026 in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Paleoecology, which identified six devastating prehistoric floods in the Yarlung Tsangpo Gorge system following natural dam failures.
The findings, it said, underscore that the threat of exceptionally large floods is grounded in the Tsangpo River's geological past rather than being merely a hypothetical engineering concern.