China's embassy accuses a senior Argentine official of spreading “rumours” about the Nepal flood

China's embassy in Buenos Aires has accused an official in Javier Milei's government of spreading “malicious rumours” and seeking to “stain the international image” of the Asian country, after he attributed to a Chinese state company responsibility for the flood that devastated the border corridor between Nepal and Tibet on August 26.

The disaster began when a mass of ice and rock broke away from a glacier front on the northern slopes of Langtang Lirung, in Nepali territory, and fell some 1,200 metres to the valley floor. The material temporarily blocked the Lhende Khola river, forming a lake that later burst through, generating a surge of water and mud that swept away the Gyirong border crossing and descended along the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli rivers. The United States Geological Survey initially recorded the signal as an earthquake and later reclassified it as the trace of the glacier collapse. The current toll stands at at least 1,050 dead and 3,916 missing in Nepal, and 16 dead and 546 missing on the Chinese side. Among those unaccounted for are more than 900 workers at hydropower plants in central Nepal.

Juan Pablo Carreira, national director of digital communication at the Argentine presidency, wrote on August 30 from his personal account on X that a Chinese state company was building a hydroelectric installation beside a glacier on the border and that failures in state organisation of industrial activity had caused the collapse. He linked the episode to other disasters he attributed to communist governments and concluded by asserting that communism kills.

Records of the episode note that attribution of the disaster to Chinese infrastructure circulated on social media during the first hours and was ruled out by subsequent satellite imagery and scientific analysis, which identified the glacier collapse on the Nepali side as the immediate source.

“A certain Argentine official, driven by biased ideological prejudice, is maliciously spreading rumours,” the Chinese mission said, calling for an end to speculation and urging him to “stop politicising or instrumentalising natural disasters”.

Declaración de Portavoz de la Embajada China en Argentina pic.twitter.com/hwciHJIXCo

Presidential spokesman Adrián Ravier said the government answers only for the content of its official accounts and that “there is no official that we know of who has made any statement on the matter”. Opposition deputies have requested that Carreira be summoned to Congress.

The episode comes as Buenos Aires negotiates with Beijing. China is Argentina's second trading partner after Brazil; the currency swap between the two central banks was renewed at the start of the month, and Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno has confirmed preparations for a trip to China with the economy minister and the presidency's general secretary, with no date set.