BEIJING - A POWERFUL 6.5-magnitude earthquake struck north-west China's Qinghai province on Monday, shaking buildings hundreds of kilometres away and sending people into the streets, officials said.

It hit at 9.22am about 150 kilometres north-east of the major Qinghai city of Goldmud, the US Geological Survey said.

China's official Xinhua news agency said there were no immediate reports of casualties.

In Golmud - an industrial city that is the starting point for the railway to Tibet - people ran out of buildings as the quake struck, Xinhua reported.

'Some residents said it was the biggest tremor they had felt' since a quake measured at 7.8 jolted the area in November 2001, it quoted Mr Luo Zhenggang, an official in Golmud, as saying.

The tremor shook buildings 245 kilometres distant in the regional capital Delinha, residents there said.

'It felt like a strong earthquake. Windows and doors shook. But it's calm now. The buildings here are undamaged', an official in Delinha told AFP under cover of anonymity because she was not allowed to talk to reporters.

Residents were also shaken by the quake in the provincial capital Xining, around 615 kilometres from the epicentre.

'So far there has been no damage reported in Xining city,' an official at the Xining seismology bureau named Mr Zhang told AFP. 'Residents living on higher floors generally reported feeling the tremor.'

The walls of some mud houses cracked and a few ramshackle huts collapsed in a county near the epicentre, Xinhua quoted a local official as saying. He said schools had also been closed.

'No casualties have been reported as yet', said the official.

The quake occurred at a depth of just 10 kilometres, the USGS said.

China suffers frequent earthquakes. An 8.0 magnitude quake which hit the south-west province of Sichuan on May 12 flattened entire towns and left more than 87,000 people dead or missing. -- AFP