Just as Africa boasts the Great Rift Valley, China's Shanxi province harbors enormous fissures that might just lead to its separation. Will Shanxi follow in the tectonic footsteps of Africa's Rift Valley? The potential for division is written across the landscape, known as the Shanxi Rift System.
In the Ordos Block of Northern China, the vast rift system is a testament to the immense changes occurring within the Earth's crust. The Ordos Block, stretching across 900 kilometers, is littered with these geological scars.
Source: aajtak
The fissures span from the southwest to the northeast, hosting valleys filled with layers of thick sediment up to 3.8 kilometers across. Historical Chinese documents reveal the deadly impact of these rifts, with several catastrophic earthquakes claiming the lives of millions over the centuries.
Historical Havoc Wrought by the Rifts
The Shanxi Rift System has been sending tremors across China for hundreds of years. Notable earthquakes include the 1303 Hongdong quake killing about 200,000 people, the 1556 Shanxi quake with over 830,000 fatalities, the 1626 Lingqiu quake claiming 5,300 lives, the 1695 Linfen quake where more than 52,000 perished, and the last major quake in 1815 Pinglu, resulting in 13,000 deaths.
These fissures are threateningly vast, spreading nearly 900 kilometers from the Qinling in the south to the Yanshan belt in the north, with widths varying between 40 to 120 kilometers, forming large basins like the Weihe Basin, Shanmenxia Basin, Yuncheng Basin, Linfen Basin, Taiyuan Basin, Xinding Basin, and Datong Basin. Typically, earthquakes of magnitude 6 strike these regions.
