According to the Associated Press, a pre-dawn earthquake tore through Liuzhou, a city in China’s southern Guangxi region, early Monday, killing two people, leaving one missing, and forcing more than 7,000 residents from their homes. Online, the disaster quickly reignited a familiar and politically charged debate: whether Chinese buildings collapse so readily in moderate earthquakes because of corrupt construction practices that local officials have spent years concealing.
The 5.2-magnitude quake struck the Liunan district of Liuzhou at 12:21 a.m. on May 18, 2026, at a depth of eight kilometers. By 4 a.m., the Party’s official wire service Xinhua and state television CCTV reported that 13 buildings had collapsed, four people had been hospitalized (none in critical condition), and 7,000 residents had been relocated to emergency shelters. The earthquake was preceded and followed by five smaller tremors ranging from magnitude 2.2 to 3.2. A further 3.3-magnitude aftershock struck the same district at 7:41 a.m., at a depth of 10 kilometers.
The epicenter was traced to Taiyangcun Township in Liunan district. Residents in Liuzhou, as well as in the cities of Nanning, Guilin, Guigang, Wuzhou, Hechi, and Laibin, reported strong shaking. Rail and road authorities imposed temporary traffic controls around Liuzhou’s rail hub, and several passenger trains were delayed or suspended. China’s Earthquake Administration declared what it described as a level-three emergency response.
Eyewitnesses describe being thrown off their feet
A Liuzhou resident told state media she was jolted awake and saw her ceiling fan swaying violently. She dressed quickly and fled downstairs.
A villager surnamed Tan from Taiyangcun described the moment of impact in detail to the outlet Jimu News. He had just returned home from town when the ground lurched. “I was standing in an open area,” he said. “When the earthquake hit, I felt a violent shaking. I couldn’t stay on my feet. It lasted three to five seconds. The lights in the village all came on at once. I could hear villagers screaming, ‘Run, run!’ and rocks were tumbling down the hillside.” Tan, 36, said it was the first earthquake he had experienced in his hometown. He spent the rest of the night outside, too afraid to go back inside. “I didn’t sleep at all,” he said. “I was worried about aftershocks. The houses in the village held up, but some buildings in the town collapsed.”
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A local shopkeeper told the same outlet he had been standing outside when the tremor hit, felt he could not keep his balance, and spent the night sleeping in his car.
At 8:14 a.m. on May 18, rescue teams pulled two people from the wreckage of a collapsed structure in the Taiyangcun community. Both were dead: a 63-year-old man surnamed Lan and his 53-year-old wife, Lan Moanluan. Search operations for one additional missing person were continuing.
One science writer says the quake was the largest in 500 years; a bigger follow-up is unlikely
Liang Hanzou, a science writer affiliated with the China Science Writers Association, told the outlet <a href="#(1-1-5)打开南方plus，发现精彩Southern Plus that historical records suggest the maximum earthquake the local fault system can generate is approximately magnitude 5.5. The May 18 quake, he said, was almost certainly the largest to strike Liuzhou in at least 500 years and came close to that theoretical ceiling. He assessed the probability of a comparable or larger follow-up quake as very low, while acknowledging that smaller aftershocks remained possible and could not be predicted with precision.
The assessment drew pointed pushback online. “Why is a science blogger speaking up when the professionals are silent?” one user wrote. Another said the conclusion had been reached prematurely. A third asked directly why China’s Earthquake Administration had issued no early warning before the quake struck.
Thirteen collapsed buildings reopen the national debate about corrupt construction
Across Chinese social media and on X, the central accusation was consistent: buildings that crumble under a 5.2-magnitude earthquake are evidence of deep-rooted construction fraud, not an act of nature.
The phrase that dominated the commentary was “tofu-dreg projects,” a term that has circulated in Chinese civic discourse for years to describe buildings erected with substandard materials, falsified inspection records, and kickbacks to local officials who approve projects they know are dangerous. The term’s origins trace to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, when thousands of schoolchildren died as their school buildings pancaked while adjacent government offices, built to a different standard, survived intact. Chinese authorities have never conducted a fully transparent reckoning with those deaths, and the phrase has served ever since as shorthand for the specific kind of corruption that turns natural disasters into preventable mass casualties.
“A magnitude 5 quake and buildings are already down. Truly tofu-dreg construction. People in this country are on their own,” one user wrote on X. Another drew the comparison that has echoed through every major Chinese earthquake since Sichuan: “Japan survives magnitude 7.0 and doesn’t lose this many buildings. We get 5.2 and 13 turns to rubble. You have to hand it to our tofu-dreg craftsmanship for knowing how to ‘adapt to local conditions.'” A third put it more bluntly: “In China, investigate any natural disaster and you’ll find a man-made one underneath it.”
Several comments pushed the point further. “A magnitude 3 or 4 quake should not be enough to bring a building down,” one user wrote. “At magnitude 7, everything would be gone.”
