China has "fairly rigorous building codes that have been in place. The problem is implementation of the codes," says Andrew Smeall, an associate with the Asia Society's US-China Center in New York.
Roger Musson, a seismologist at the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, Scotland, notes that China has good earthquake engineers, but "you can never tell what's going to happen on the spot."
In Turkey's devastating 1999 earthquake, building codes were excellent, but "fly by night builders" had erected buildings using "extremely poor" materials, Mr. Musson says.
"You can buy the building inspector," he says, but "you can't buy off the earthquake."
China has a history of massive earthquakes. About 200 of its cities with a population of over a million are located at risk of magnitude 7 earthquake.
"In this case, where the earthquake occurred, there are a magnitude 4 earthquakes every couple of months," says Lupei Zhu, an associate professor of geophysics, at St. Louis University in Missouri, and a former employee of the China Earthquake Administration, which oversees public awareness and the collection of seismic data for the country.
