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China

Typhoon slams China as rains swell Yangtze

Typhoon Otto roared across eastern China on Wednesday, heading for the lower reaches of the Yangtze River where weeks of flooding have killed thousands, officials and state media said.

"The situation will be more dangerous because the typhoon will bring strong winds and rains and the dikes have been soaked in water for a long time," said an official with the Jiangxi Meteorological Station.

Otto, which caused at least five deaths and threw transportation into disarray in parts of Taiwan on Tuesday, hit China's southeastern province of Fujian early on Wednesday and was expected to deepen the misery of flood-stricken areas as it moved north.

Fujian officials said they had no reports of injuries or damage, but added they expected the typhoon to dump more rain on Jiangxi, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces.

"The impact of the typhoon was not big in Fujian because it is not very strong, but it will increase the difficulties for flood-control works in Boyang lake in Jiangxi province," a foreign affairs official in Fujian said.

Heavy rains have lashed much of central and eastern China for weeks, triggering flooding along the Yangtze that has killed thousands of people, driven millions from their homes and caused at least $4.8 billion in damage.

Although China has not released specific data on the effect of the floods on crops and industry, it said last month summer grain output was 11 million tonnes below last year's and that flooding had shaved 0.4 percentage point off first-half economic growth.

"Local farmers have been hit the hardest by the floods as they come at a time when early rice is waiting to be reaped and late rice to be planted," Xinhua said.

Nationwide, some 600,000 army, navy, air force and police personnel had been mobilised in the struggle against the floods, the People's Daily said.

But China's Communist-controlled media have given scant detail of the death and destruction caused by the floods, instead highlighting the activities of soldiers and communist party cadres.

For instance, after officials said some 200 people, including about 100 soldiers, were washed away on Saturday following the collapse of a water-logged dike in Hunan province's Jiayu county, state media reported only the deaths of three soldiers and 10 flood workers.

And although the floods are China's worst in more than four decades, state television on Wednesday mentioned them only after a story on Beijing's success in fighting smuggling of antiques and cultural relics.

Xinhua said the skies continued to dump on the upper reaches of the Yangtze, indicating scant relief for millions of villagers who have turned dikes into refugee camps stretching for dozens of miles.

Flood victims, already struggling with disease and with shortages of grain and medicine as they wait for flood waters to retreat, have had a new worry on their hands -- rising crime.

"Cases such as looting, robbery and stealing are on the rise as troublemakers are taking advantage of the severe flooding," Xinhua quoted Li Weihe, director of the Public Security Bureau in Anxiang county, as saying.

Many villagers, in the rush to flee flooded homes, had stashed valuables in treetops or on their roofs, making easy pickings for thieves, Li said.

"In the beginning of the flooding, when night fell, some hooligans took boats to get things out of the water, some even went into rooms to plunder," Li said, adding that police had set up round-the-clock patrols.