Antiseismic building, locating faults reduce damage, deaths

China has been promoting construction of antiseismic buildings and working to locate the scope of active faults, where earthquake destruction can be greater, to reduce the potential damage, a senior official said.

The country had built about 24 million antiseismic houses in rural areas, accounting for about 10 percent of rural dwellings, by the end of 2017, benefiting 68 million rural residents, said Zheng Guoguang, vice-minister of emergency management and head of the China Earthquake Administration.

Zheng said all houses in rural areas of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region are now of the antiseismic type. The project's results have been so good that magnitude-5 tremors have resulted in no injuries to rural residents and magnitude-6 quakes have caused no deaths, as shown in recent quakes.