Typhoon Meranti batters southeastern China

Typhoon Meranti battered southeastern China with heavy winds and torrential rain on Thursday, cutting power supplies, ripping up trees and smashing windows, a day after lashing Taiwan.

The super typhoon, packing winds of 170 kilometres per hour made landfall around 3am near the city of Xiamen before heading inland, state media said.

No reports of casualties have emerged in China during the strongest global storm of the year.

Dozens of flights and train services have been cancelled, Chinese state television said, disrupting travel at the start of the mid-autumn holiday.

Schools and many businesses were already shut for the three-day festival when people traditionally meet up with family for celebratory meals.

Pictures on state media showed flooded streets, fallen trees and crushed cars in Xiamen as rescuers in boats evacuated people.

About 320,000 homes were without power in Fujian province's Xiamen city. Across the whole of Fujian province, 1.65 million homes had no electricity.

Large sections of Xiamen also suffered water supply disruptions and some windows in tall buildings shattered, sending glass showering onto the ground below, state news agency Xinhua said.

Xinhua has called Meranti the strongest typhoon to hit that part of the country since the founding of Communist China in 1949 and the strongest so far this year anywhere in the world.

Tens of thousands of people had already been evacuated as the storm approached and fishing boats were called back to port.

One person died and 38 were injured in Taiwan, the Central Emergency Operation Centre there said, as the typhoon hit the southern part of the island on Wednesday.

Meranti was a Category 5 typhoon, the strongest classification awarded by Tropical Storm Risk storm tracker, before it made landfall on the mainland and has since been downgraded to Category 2.

The typhoon will continue to lose strength as it pushes inland and up toward China's commercial capital of Shanghai, but will bring heavy rain.

Typhoons are common in the region at this time of year, picking up strength as they cross the warm waters of the Pacific and bringing fierce winds and rain when they hit land.

Taiwan is also bracing for the possible impact of another tropical storm, Typhoon Malakas, which is forecast to sweep past the east coast of the island on Saturday.