A devastating earthquake in China's remote Tibet region on January 7 killed at least 126 people, with the tremor also rattling parts of neighbouring Nepal and India. But dramatic footage of a quake damaging a busy roundabout that spread globally online and appeared in a Thai television report does not show the recent disaster.

In November 2023, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake shook northwestern Nepal, killing at least 138 people and injuring dozens. In 2015, a magnitude 7.8 quake struck near Kathmandu in neighbouring Nepal, killing about 9,000 people and injuring thousands in that country's worst earthquake

The China Earthquake Networks Center measured the quake's magnitude as 6.8, while the U.S. Geological Survey reported it as 7.1.