ADRIFT: A man paddling through a flooded street in Meizhou, in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, on Sunday. Floods and landslides have killed at least 71 people nationwide so far this month. -- REUTERS

View more photos

The National Meteorological Centre yesterday forecast heavy rain south of the Yangtze River, China's longest, and continued downpours in the south of the country until Thursday.

Floods and landslides triggered by the rain have killed at least 71 people, left dozens missing and forced nearly 600,000 from their homes since the beginning of this month, the national flood relief headquarters said.

Rescue efforts are continuing in the provinces of Hunan, Guizhou, Guangdong, Jiangxi and Fujian, and in the Guangxi region, as floodwaters sweep through mountainous regions prone to landslides.

Nearly nine million people have been directly affected by the flooding so far, and factories and other enterprises have been closed in some areas, according to the Xinhua news agency.

Overall economic losses are estimated at close to 3 billion yuan (S$604 million).

Areas around Guangdong's Pearl River delta are among the hardest hit.

'Heavy rain in Guangdong weakened somewhat last night, but we expect heavy rain for today and tomorrow,' the relief headquarters said in a forecast posted on its website yesterday.

The Pearl River delta sits at the confluence of several rivers that originate in neighbouring mountainous regions before emptying into the South China Sea.

According to the flood relief headquarters, water levels along the Beijiang River, a major tributary of the Pearl, were 5.4m above the flood-warning level on Sunday afternoon, but were receding.

But along the Xijiang River, another tributary, water levels on Sunday were 1.2m over the warning level and rising.

Other Pearl tributaries were facing similar situations, while reservoirs in the region were also nearing breaching levels, the headquarters said.

'We have got experience of floods,' Mr Zhong Shizhan, a resident of Mei county in Guangdong province, was quoted as saying by the Southern Metropolis Daily yesterday.

'But I have never known a flood like this.'

And China's annual typhoon season, which Xinhua said is 'getting under way in the south', could exacerbate the flooding.

There has been no word on when the typhoon season will begin this year, although it normally starts around late July.

Last year, the country experienced an unusually harsh typhoon season that began more than a month earlier.

Earlier this year, there was a major drought on the upper reaches of the Yangtze, and weather experts warned then that serious flooding, particularly along the middle and lower sections, could follow.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE