<p>How to adapt urban economies and industrial development to natural hazards is a key focus of sustainable development goals. Existing research predominantly identifies the impacts of natural hazards and disasters at the aggregate economic level, leaving scope for analysis from an economic structural perspective. Taking seismic events in China’s mainland as an example, we followed the vein of evolutionary economic geography, and examined the impacts of earthquakes on regional industrial change. We integrated data from the Geocoded Disasters Database and the China Customs Trade Database to formulate a panel that covers more than 300 prefecture-level administrative units of China’s mainland. Our empirical findings indicate that earthquakes undermine export-based product entry via crowding out innovation resources, hampering the entry of new firms, and increasing business operation costs. Our work contributes to the dialogue in literature between evolutionary economic geography and disaster economics, while providing recommendations for policymakers and urban planners.</p>