Landslide in SE China

Just north of Hong Kong, a large, man-made hilltop mound of earth and debris became unstable and collapsed into the city of Shenzhen on Dec. 21, completely covering 33 buildings and over 380,000 square meters of land. As of press time, 76 people remained missing and were presumed dead, with one person confirmed dead. One man was rescued alive after being trapped for 67 hours. More than 900 people were evacuated from the area. The cause of the collapse was the instability of the mound, which had been built up of leftover material from construction projects for at least two years. Local residents and the national Ministry of Land & Resources both had previously described the mound as unstable. Shenzen was China’s first “special economic zone,” allowing it a more free-market-style governing system than that of most of the rest of the country.