First, whereas left-lateral offsets along
the large strike-slip faults of central China
may reach several hundred kilometres
(Tapponnier and Molnar, 1977), rightlateral
offsets along the smaller strike-slip
faults of the Tien Shan and Altai do not
exceed tens of kilometres (Tapponnier and
Molnar, 1979) (Fig. 1). Orders of magnitude
of offsets on corresponding faults in the unilaterally confined experiments are
comparable (10 mm in the experiment are
equivalent to 400 km in Asia)