Qualla: 2015 Shenzhen Landslide

2015 Shenzhen Landslide: Introduction

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wishds, CC BY-SA 3.0. The ground at Hengtaiyu industrial park began to move shortly after 11 a.m. on 20 December 2015. What came next was not an earthquake, and it was not a natural landslide — it was an artificial mountain of construction waste collapsing under its own weight onto the workers, buildings, and dormitories below. Seventy-three people died. Four were never found. The Ministry of Land and Resources confirmed what many already suspected: the adjacent natural hillside had not moved. Only the dumped earth had.

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Image: Wishds | CC BY-SA 3.0

2015 Shenzhen Landslide: How the Mountain Grew

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wishds, CC BY-SA 3.0. Over the previous two years, construction projects across Shenzhen — one of China's fastest-growing cities — had generated enormous quantities of excavated soil and debris. That material needed somewhere to go, and a former quarry in the Guangming New District became its destinat...

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Image: Wishds | CC BY-SA 3.0

2015 Shenzhen Landslide: The Morning It Fell

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wishds, CC BY-SA 3.0. When the saturated mass gave way, it moved fast. The collapse buried industrial buildings and the residential quarters where workers lived and slept. More than 2,900 rescue personnel — including around 800 from the People's Liberation Army — descended on the site within hours. Mo...

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Image: Wishds | CC BY-SA 3.0

2015 Shenzhen Landslide: The People Who Were Lost

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit biny86755, CC BY 2.0. The victims were workers — people who had come to Shenzhen to build the city and had made their homes in the industrial park's dormitories. Their families waited for news that, for many, never came. On 27 December, seven days after the collapse and in accordance with Chinese mour...

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Image: biny86755 | CC BY 2.0

2015 Shenzhen Landslide: Accountability and Aftermath

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wishds, CC BY-SA 3.0. The investigation moved quickly. Within weeks, police had arrested a number of people connected to the irregular operation of the dump site. In April 2017, forty-five people — among them government officials — were charged in local courts with negligence and corruption. Prison se...

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Image: Wishds | CC BY-SA 3.0

2015 Shenzhen Landslide: A City's Reckoning

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wishds, CC BY-SA 3.0. Shenzhen had been, for decades, a symbol of China's capacity for rapid transformation. A fishing village in 1979, it became a metropolis of millions in a single generation. The pace of construction required to sustain that growth was extraordinary — and so was the volume of debri...

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Image: Wishds | CC BY-SA 3.0