Complete Pandemonium in Heaven: The Great Tangshan Earthquake in 1976 and China's Cultural Revolution

 Tian is a word in Mandarin Chinese that is most closely analogous to the English word Heaven.  The word Tian in both Taoism and Confucianism is used to represent the metaphysical, celestial realm, and it is believed that Tian directly influences the Di, or earthly realm, of time and space inhabited by human beings. 

 In traditional Chinese culture it was believed that rulers governed due to a “Mandate from Heaven” where they were able to control what happened on earth only because of a balance in the Heavens.  Accordingly, traditional Chinese belief systems hold that if there is a natural disaster, or some other calamitous event on earth, then it must be due to disorder in the Heavens or Tian.  When such a natural disaster occurs, traditionally, it would undermine the authority of earthly rulers.

At exactly 3:42 in the morning on July 28, 1976 the Heavens above China were thrown into utter pandemonium when the most deadly and destructive earthquake in the world in the last five-hundred years rocked the northeastern Chinese city of Tangshan.

Railway in Tangshan after the quake

Information coming out of Communist China which is always slow, and rarely entirely truthful, was particularly slow in the aftermath of the Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976, which occurred in the waning days of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution.  But even the close-knit and tight-lipped Communist authorities couldn’t hide the unimaginable scope of the death and devastation caused by the Tangshan Earthquake.

A New York Times article published less than a year after the earthquake on June 1, 1977, after the death of Chairman Mao when Chinese authorities first began to speak openly about their response to the mega-quake stated, “In a highly unusual display of candor Chinese authorities have described last summer’s Tangshan earthquake as the most deadly in China in more than 400 years.”

That same article in the Times went on to state that, “Officials said that the July 28 quake…threw some residents of Tangshan City six feet in the air and carved a swath of destruction four miles wide and five miles long through the heart of the heavily populated coal mining metropolis.”

Tangshan, which in the summer of 1976, was a city of slightly more than one million inhabitants, lies on the corner of what geologists call the Great North China Plain, one of the most seismologically active areas in the world.  And in the middle of the night on July 28, 1976 the great Tangshan Fault, which runs right through the middle of the city that sits on the corner of the Great North China tectonic plain, completely ruptured.

Map showing the extent of 1976 quake with Tangshan as epicenter

The quake that occurred at 3:42 a.m. in the middle of the night on July 28, 1976 was a magnitude 8.0 and within seconds it caused eighty-five percent of all the buildings in Tangshan to completely collapse. Just prior to the quake survivors across China reported seeing large bright yellow and orange fireballs in the sky above Tangshan. Chinese authorities admitted that the quake killed approximately 250,000 with most people being crushed to death by falling masonry as they slept.  Today, though, researchers believe that based solely on the number of people who were later reported missing after the earthquake in Tangshan that the death toll could have been as high as half a million people!

Effects from the quake could be felt as far away as seven hundred miles from the epicenter in Tangshan.  The nation’s main railway system was left in ruins, and the entire power grid of northeastern China, including Beijing which is situated only about seventy miles from Tangshan in Hubei Province, completely failed within seconds of the quake.

Though the Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976 is one of the most devastating natural disasters in world history, and is considered by many to be the most deadly natural disaster in over half a millenia, it not only left China’s physical infrastructure in ruins, but it also in many ways, spelled the end of Chairman Mao Zedong’s ill-fated and ruthless Cultural Revolution in Communist China.

Devastation in Tangshan 1976

The Cultural Revolution or “The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution'' as it was called by the Communist Party in China at the time, began in 1966.  It lasted for exactly 10 years and ended with the death of Chairman Mao in 1976 only weeks after the Great Tangshan Earthquake.

It was an attempt by Communist leaders, primarily Chairman Mao and his wife Jian Qing to stamp out any traditional beliefs in China and any lasting vestiges of free expression or Capitalism that may have yet remained in the country after the Communist takeover in 1949.  The Cultural Revolution in China was a war on intellectuals, free-thinkers and the fabric of traditional Chinese society itself.  The Revolution caused brother to turn on brother and turned Mao’s China into nothing short of a police state as it used brutal methods of oppression, terror, imprisonment and torture in conjunction with radicalized propaganda and state controlled media to stamp out any dissent or difference of opinion in Chinese society.

The Cultural Revolution, which lasted just over a decade and cut China off from most of the outside world as the Communists under Mao consolidated power, largely failed due in some small part to the death and devastation caused by the Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976.  Chairman Mao Zedong himself, the almost cult-like leader of Communist China for nearly half a century, passed away on September 9, 1976 less than six weeks after the quake while soldiers were still desperately attempting to pull survivors from the rubble.

Propaganda poster of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

During the Cultural Revolution in the 1970’s Chinese authorities believed that by watching for tectonic movements and by being mindful of fore-shocks or those small quakes that come before the big one, that they could forewarn their citizens of an impending huge and destructive earthquake that would allow them to flee to safety before the quake occurred.  Communist Party officials during the Cultural Revolution, “Considered it everyone’s duty to believe in the feasibility of earthquake prediction.”  (Peking Review Vol. 18 March 1975)

But the Great Tangshan Earthquake struck without warning in the middle of the night in July of 1976.  The unexpected suddenness of such a massive earthquake instantly undermined the authority of certain Chinese Communist leaders, particularly those that had been architects of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960’s.  

Survivors reported hearing a loud explosion, or a series of loud explosions, and seeing bright fireballs in the sky before their city literally collapsed around them and left perhaps as many as  half a million dead buried beneath the rubble.

Even at the time there was no hiding the fact that the ferocity and destructive force of the Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976 took even the usually circumspect Chinese authorities completely by surprise and left them reeling in its aftermath.

The Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee broadcast a statement the day after the quake on the 29th of July 1976 saying there had been an earthquake that, “caused great losses to people’s life and property.”

In a rare candid statement Chinese authorities went on to say that day that, “Nearly every building in Tangshan City was flattened,” and that, “there were reports that fifty people had died as a result of damage from the earthquake in the capital city of Beijing,” which was nearly one-hundred miles distant from the quake’s epicenter in Tangshan.

In the immediate aftermath of the Tangshan quake there was a real concern among Chinese Communist leaders that such a devastating natural disaster would somehow undermine their legitimacy as leaders in the eyes of China’s then nearly one billion citizens.

At the time there was reticence among Chinese authorities to issue warnings to the populace in and around Tangshan out of fear, that perhaps, their highly touted system for predicting earthquakes might prove wrong thereby undermining the whole premise of their authority.  Therefore significant aftershocks raised the overall death toll by potentially tens of thousands with UPI (United Press International) estimating in 1976 that, “There could have been as many as 550,000 to 600,000 deaths in and around Tangshan as a result of the earthquake and its aftershocks.”

Ruins in Tangshan

Although in the days leading up to the quake residents in and around Tangshan had begun to notice many unusual phenomena such as, “Well water levels inexplicably rising and large packs of rats running through the streets in broad daylight,” Chinese authorities failed to sound the earthquake alarm that had been so highly touted to the masses.  (https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/worst-modern-earthquake)

Still, in the days after the Great Tangshan Earthquake the Chinese government refused all offers of foreign aid or international help, not willing to appear weak, or unprepared before the Chinese population.

In response to the disaster China immediately mobilized the full manpower of the People’s Liberation Army.  Within hours of the earthquake over 100,000 soldiers, most on foot, began marching towards Tangshan to help with relief efforts.  Over 30,000 construction workers and an additional 50,000 medical personnel were mobilized to help with the relief efforts.

The People’s Republic of China, which refused countless offers of foreign aid from dozens of countries around the world, touted the relief effort in Tangshan as an unparalleled success, but there was no heavy equipment to help in the relief efforts and tens of thousands more probably died from suffocation and dehydration after being trapped for days and even weeks beneath the rubble of Tangshan.

Chinese Government drawing of soldiers headed toward Tangshan

As it was, the Chinese government in the 1980’s long after Chairman Mao’s ill-fated Cultural Revolution had ended, released an official death toll for the Great Tangshan Earthquake of just under 250,000, though the real number is certainly much higher.

Fittingly enough, Mao Zedong, leader of the Cultural Revolution died on September 9, 1976 with the blood of the victims of the Tangshan Earthquake still on his hands, and along with Mao, died his dreams of eradicating traditional Chinese culture and tradition.

Today a memorial with the names of over 242,000 individuals thought to have died in the Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976 stands in a park in Tangshan and the once great coal mining city has been rebuilt and stands today as a testament to Chinese industry home to a population of nearly 2 million souls.

But running just below the teeming and bustling city streets is the Tangshan Fault Line and at any moment that fault line could move and rain utter pandemonium from Heaven down once more upon the unsuspecting people of Tangshan, China.