The elastic-plastic-viscous lithosphere
Ductile flow: Surface deformation and lower crustal flow in Easter Tibet Royden et al., 1997, Sciences v.276.
In this paper published in Science the authors argue that the lower crust underneath Tibet is so weak that upper crustal deformation is decoupled for the motion of the underlying mantle. The morphology produced by the numerical model on the right matches the observed strain field on the southeastern side of the Tibet. It shows that despite the plate moving northward most of the strain field in southeast Tibet shows horizontal displacement toward the east, southeast, and south.