Don, there are a number of news reports etc. at different places on the Internet which discuss the earthquake I mentioned which was believed to possibly be linked with the mine collapse. People who are interested can try to determine which one it was. I don’t recall myself.

I have never really known how the overall earthquake forecasting program situation looks in China. So I could never determine why people there would do this or that. I did some checking and was a little surprised by what I discovered. And I will be taking this information into account in the future. It must be remembered that this is just opinion or impression information. It is probably just part of the picture. And there are no accuracy guarantees for even this limited amount of information.

A major problem which can be found in just about every country, especially the U.S., appears to also be present in China. And that is the fact that there are different forecasting groups which are operating independently of one another and which are moving largely in different directions. In my opinion this particular problem is epidemic here in the U.S.

I gather that the largest group in China is the official state run program called the State Seismological Bureau (SSB). It is the one which has those thousands of scientists and researchers and the small army of part-time or volunteer workers.

For certain reasons that I do not want to discuss it sounds to me like the “official” policy of the SSB is that it is not possible at this time to generate completely accurate and reliable earthquake predictions. However, it also sounds like it is their “unofficial” policy that it is possible to forecast some of them. They apparently spend a lot of time and energy on trying to do that. And if and when they believe that one might be about to occur somewhere they may try to get people out of buildings which could collapse and into safer temporary structures.

So, it would be my guess that one of the main reasons that we do not hear too much about what they are doing regarding earthquake forecasting is related to that difference between those official and unofficial policies. If the official one says that you cannot predict every earthquake at this time then they are not probably going to circulate information regarding their efforts which might give people in other countries the impression that it represents a contradiction of that policy.

This is the type of thing that I refer to as “earthquake forecasting politics.”

Next, it sounds like there are a number of independent forecasting groups of different sizes in China. In certain cases some of them might involve just one researcher and a few assistants. And the different groups might or might not be interested in talking with one another and with people outside the country. So if you hear that there was a successful prediction in China or that some advanced forecasting method has been developed there then it is probably important to determine and then take into account if it involved the SSB or one of those independent groups.

There was a presentation on my research for one group there last December. And it sounds like that group is an important scientific organization which has a certain type of official status. But it is not really a part of the government’s SSB.

Canie visited China a while back. And if she sees this note then perhaps she might want to express an opinion regarding what is taking place there based on what she herself observed.

In any case, I am glad that I checked on this. I learned some things that I was unaware of up until now.