Scientists say a tsunami hit China 1,000 years ago – and there’s still a risk of a giant wave hitting today
By Martin Choi
A study by Chinese researchers has found that a tsunami almost wiped out civilisation in what is today’s Guangdong province about 1,000 years ago, highlighting the risk of destructive sea waves to the country’s coastal areas.
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Led by Sun Liguang and Xie Zhouqing from the USTC, they concluded that a tsunami which originated in the South China Sea struck the coast of today’s Guangdong in AD1076.
They first found evidence of the destructive sea wave on Dongdao island in the Xisha archipelago in 2013. That discovery included heavy corals and rocks that had been buried or embedded in the seabed as far as 200 metres from the island’s shore – and they believed that only a tsunami could have lifted them out that far.
Through computer modelling in the following years, the researchers reached the conclusion that the tsunami was possibly triggered by an earthquake on the Manila Trench and that it hit the coasts of today’s Guangdong and Hainan provinces of China as well as parts of Thailand.
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Companies such as Fuqing Nuclear Power Company are also taking the threat into consideration. Chen Guocai, general manager of the firm, which is building a third-generation reactor in coastal Fujian province, told state broadcaster CCTV that it was essentially “tsunami-proof”.
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