This morning Taiwan was struck by an earthquake of magnitude 6.4 on the Richter scale. Reports so far mention 11 people being injured and no fatal casualties. The epicenter of the quake was in the mountains northeast of the city of Kaohsiung at a depth of 5 km.

Hence, not exactly a Haiti or Chile-like disaster it seems, yet only 11 years ago a quake measuring 7.3 killed approx. 2,400 people and destroyed/damaged 50,000 buildings on the island. As usual, we were slightly amused by Xinhua’s -the PRC’s official press agency- depiction of the situation, referring to the island as China’s Taiwan: