Basic characteristics of active tectonics of China

During the last 20 years, studies on active tectonics in China have entered a new quantitative research stage and made a great progress. Summing up the quantitative results, a Map of Active Tectonics of China on the scale of 1: 4 million has been compiled. In the map all types of active tectonics and their kinematic parameters are reflected in possible detail, such as active faults, active folds, active basins, active blocks, volcanoes, and earthquakes. This paper summarizes the basic characteristics of active tectonics of China. The Himalaya Mountains and Taiwan Island are major plate boundaries where the slip rates are larger than 15 mm/a. Tectonic activity in the continental intraplate region is characterized by block motion. The crust and lithosphere in the region were dissected into blocks with different orders. Of them the Qinghai-Xizang (Tibet), Xinjiang, and North China block regions exhibit the most recent tectonic activity. The kinematic characteristics of more than 200 active tectonic zones indicate that the intraplate tectonic activity represents a block motion at a limited low rate. Horizontal slip rate along the tectonic boundary belts between the blocks is generally less than 10 mm/a, and 10–15 mm/a in maximum, and hence it does not support the continental escape theory of high rate of slip.