Cooperative earthquake research between the United States and the People’s Republic of China

This paper describes cooperative research by scientists of the US and the People's Republic of China (PRC) which has resulted in important new findings concerning the fundamental characteristics of earthquakes and new insight into mitigating earthquake hazards. There have been over 35 projects cooperatively sponsored by the Earthquake Studies Protocol in the past 5 years. The projects are organized into seven annexes, including investigations in earthquake prediction, intraplate faults and earthquakes, earthquake engineering and hazards investigation, deep crustal structure, rock mechanics, seismology, and data exchange. Operational earthquake prediction experiments are currently being developed at two primary sites: western Yunnan Province near the town of Xiaguan, where there are several active faults, and the northeast China plain, where the devastating 1976 Tangshan earthquake occurred.