Powerful typhoon targets Shanghai

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A powerful typhoon targeted China's booming eastern province of Zhejiang and the nation's financial capital, Shanghai, on Tuesday, prompting evacuation of over 1.6 million people as ships were recalled to port.

Typhoon Wipha was about 300 km southeast of Wenling city at 9 a.m. British time. With gusts of up to 198 km per hour (123 mph), it was moving northwest at 25 to 30 km per hour and should make landfall in the early hours of Wednesday, Xinhua news agency said.

"East China, including the commercial hub of Shanghai, is preparing for what may be the most destructive typhoon in a decade," the agency said.

The intensity of the typhoon was close to that of Saomai, which killed more than 400 people in China last August and was labelled the strongest storm to hit the country in 50 years, said Chen Hongyi, deputy chief of the meteorological bureau in the coastal city of Taizhou, Xinhua reported.

China's National Meteorological Centre described the storm on its Web site (www.nmc.gov.cn) as a "super typhoon".

By Tuesday evening 1.63 million people in Shanghai, Zhejiang and neighbouring Fujian province had been evacuated, Xinhua said. Shanghai and surrounding cities had ordered all schools to close.

"Wipha will hit our province head on and the areas affected would be the most economically developed and densely populated," the Zhejiang provincial government warned.

"Strong winds will come with heavy rainfall ... The relief work will be complicated and grave," it said in a statement on its Web site (www.zj.gov.cn).

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