by Bart Marcois
Beijing put a city in the flood path. And they’re in the process of doing it again.
Let’s put a couple of myths to bed right away. One, the Tibet-Nepal flood wasn’t caused by climate change. The glacier fell because the bedrock under it fell. Two, Chinese engineering projects did not make the rock cliff fall. But Beijing did something worse: it put a city in the flood path. And it’s in the process of doing it again.
Last week, a wall of ice and rock split off from a part of the Himalayas called Langtang Lirung, dammed the river below for ten minutes, and then gave way to a 70 mph flow of boulders, ice, rock, water, and mud. The flood hit Nepal and the Chinese border settlement at Gyirong.
The usual climate grifters immediately proclaimed it the result of melting glaciers. News media obediently brayed that until you give up your gas stove and your SUV, similar disasters will usher in the end of days. Unfortunately for “the narrative,” clear satellite photos showed within days that the rock under the glacier split from the cliff face, and the ice rode along.
The next question was whether China’s huge engineering projects triggered the collapse. They did not. The rock fell because of Himalayan geology.
The Rock Gave Way
The Himalayas are the edge of one of the most active tectonic plates in the world. The mountain bedrock is composed of bands of the Earth’s crust with built-in planes of weakness. Rockfalls happen constantly. Even large falls like this one happen several times a decade. This was different because of the death toll.
The Death Toll Was a Policy Choice
We saw dramatic footage of an imposing structure being washed away by the rushing waters. That was the border post of Gyirong and its customs and immigration control facilities. It was built by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on the border between Tibet and Nepal to make a political point. This was the CCP’s way of marking territory and establishing Chinese claims to Tibet. The trouble was that the roads, buildings, and settlements were built in the floodplain. This is typical of Communist disregard for human life.
The CCP claims the port was for commerce, a way to connect far-flung parts of China. But once the rock face fell into the river valley, the dam of rock and ice it formed lasted only six minutes. Then that dam broke, and the gorge delivered the flood to the only flat ground—the ground Beijing paved.
Beijing is responsible for the death toll because CCP officials put people, buses, and a showpiece gateway where a Himalayan gorge sends its surplus rock.
Now Look at Medog
The real lesson applies to the next gorge.
About 150 miles away, in a bigger, steeper, longer canyon, China is building a cascade of five hydroelectric stations on the Yarlung Tsangpo River at Medog. This is the largest hydropower project in the history of the world. The rock of the surrounding gorges is the same found at Langtang. Cliff faces there fail on the same schedule. Landslides and debris flows are constant and inevitable.
A project of that size will require years of camps, roads, tunnels, worker housing, and concrete. The five dams will be designed for floods and earthquakes. Supporting infrastructure cannot be designed, however, for a mountain that moves several miles in six minutes.
The Medog dam project is intended for political power: to generate electricity on a scale undreamed of, to power AI that will develop doomsday weapons and establish more complete control of the population. It is intended to exercise regional dominance by controlling the water flow downstream to India and Bangladesh. It is intended to buttress China’s claim that Tibet is its interior province. And the potential human cost is considered insignificant.
Stop Building in the Floodway
China should scale down the Medog complex. Not to keep peace with India, or as a concession to Tibetan exile groups, but because the eastern Himalayan gorges are a poor receptacle for millions of tons of concrete. The Himalaya will keep splitting along its geologic planes. That is what foliated rock does when a continent is still moving. The Party can’t stop it. It only controls how many people are in the way.
Langtang Lirung already answered the engineering question. The political question is whether Beijing has learned anything.
Stop building in the floodplains of these narrow gorges. The toll in terms of human life is too great a price.
Photo: An aerial view shows houses damaged and deluged in sludge in the aftermath of flash floods at Trishuli Center in Nepal's Nuwakot district on September 1, 2026. Devastating floods on the China-Nepal border have killed at least 987 people in Nepal, the disaster authority said on September 1, taking overall deaths to more than 1,000. (Photo by Arun SANKAR / AFP via Getty Images)
Bart Marcois is a former career Foreign Service officer and was the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy for International Affairs. He produces daily commentaries at youtube.com/@AMinuteWithBart.
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/09/07/china-and-the-nepal-flood-geology-trumps-politics/
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