China's seismic activity stems mainly from the collision of the Indian Plate with the Eurasian Plate, which raises the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau and pushes stress deep into the continent. This makes western provinces like Sichuan, Yunnan, Xinjiang and Tibet especially prone to large, shallow and often deadly intraplate earthquakes.
The 2008 Sichuan earthquake, magnitude 7.9, killed nearly ninety thousand people, echoing the catastrophic 1976 Tangshan quake that remains one of history's deadliest. China also has notable volcanism, from the Changbaishan (Tianchi) volcano on the Korean border to the Wudalianchi field, reminders that the country's geology is far from static.