The Forgotten Earthquakes

The Forgotten Earthquakes

On July 28th, 1976, two earthquakes hit in China, near the city of Tangshan. They were just 100 miles from Beijing. Tangshan was a city of 1 million that was almost completely destroyed in a day. Beijing’s port city, Tianjin, was also hit as was parts of the capital Beijing. Although the death toll was never confirmed by Chinese authorities, it may have exceeded 700,000. That would easily make the Tangshan earthquakes the most deadly natural catastrophe of the 1900s.

China at the time was still reeling from the aftermath of its decade-long and ultimately pointless “Cultural Revolution.” The response to the earthquakes was incompetent, ineffective, and corrupt. It directly led to more deaths and more suffering. Word of the earthquake and the terrible relief effort spread throughout China. In whispers, of course, since counterrevolutionaries were and are still arrested when the crime is nothing more than speaking a unhappy truth about the government. Already in poor health, Mao died just six weeks after Tangshan. And suddenly that and the ensuing power struggle were all that was talked about. The largest natural disaster of a century, and it is not taught or remembered.