Beijing  - At least one person died and tens of thousands were evacuated Wednesday as Typhoon Hagupit brought gales and torrential rain to much of southern China.

The storm first hit the Philippines, where rescuers struggled to save 13 miners trapped for two days in a flooded shaft as the nation's death toll from Hagupit rose to eight, officials there said.

The rescue operation was slowed down by floodwaters inside the mineshaft in the northern town of Itogon in Benguet province, 225 kilometres north of Manila, said Chief Superintendent Eugene Martin, a regional police chief.

The miners entered the shaft late Monday despite heavy rains brought by Hagupit, which pummelled large parts of the Philippines for three days, triggering flashfloods and landslides.

Southern China bore the brunt of the storm Wednesday. The island province of Hainan evacuated about 107,000 people from vulnerable areas while two cities in nearby Guangdong province moved more than 38,000 as the typhoon approached, news reports said.

Hagupit hit land in Guangdong's Dianbai county near the city of Maoming, packing winds of more than 200 kilometres per hour at its centre, the government's Xinhua news agency quoted meteorologists as saying.

One man died in Dianbai after he was blown down while trying to repair the roof of his house, the local Yangcheng Evening News said.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council in the Philippines said the storm killed eight people there, left 15 missing and displaced more than 10,000.

The council said three of the fatalities were buried in a landslide in the northern city of Baguio, one was electrocuted in the northern province of La Union, and four drowned in the provinces of Antique, Ilocos Sur and Samar.

Forty-four houses were damaged while some roads and bridges remained impassable because of floodwaters and landslides.

In China, gales uprooted many trees and tore down billboards while officials in Maoming said a fishing boat sank off Dianbai but no casualties were reported, Xinhua said.

All schools were closed in the worst-hit areas of Guangdong, and streets were deserted during the morning rush hour, it said.

Some reports said the typhoon was the worst to buffet Guangdong in a decade.

It weakened into a tropical storm later Wednesday, but heavy rain was forecast to continue on Thursday, bringing the risk of floods and landslides.

A team of 130 police officers battled for four hours early Wednesday to rescue about 50 people stranded when their village was flooded, the agency said.

Guangdong on Tuesday had called back to port more than 50,000 fishing vessels with nearly 200,000 crew.

Most flights in Guangdong's busy Shenzhen airport were cancelled Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, and all flights were cancelled at the main airport in Haikou, Hainan's capital.

Hagupit, whose name means "lashing" in Filipino language Tagalog, also grounded flights, closed schools and injured at least 58 people as it skirted Hong Kong early Wednesday.

Trees were felled and roads were flooded as torrential rains and gale-force winds lashed the former British colony, shutting the airport for 12 hours starting at 9 pm (1300 GMT) Tuesday.

Fifty-six flights were cancelled, 92 flights were delayed and three flights were diverted. There were 16 cases of flooding, and seven cases of scaffolding collapsing across the city of 6.9 million.

The typhoon, one of the strongest to hit the region this year, passed within 180 kilometres of Hong Kong.

Schools and courts remained closed Wednesday as cleanup got under way, but public transport was operating as normal, and Cathay Pacific and Dragonair resumed flights from 8 am. (dpa)