Chanchu caused scores of homes to be flooded in China, and officials moved more than 1 million people to schools and the homes of relatives in Guangdong and Fujian provinces. Nearly 100,000 ships were ordered to return to harbor, Xinhua said.

Fujian estimated storm damage at $480 million, including damage to 9,600 homes and 2,116,658 acres of crops. There was no immediate word on damage estimates in Guangdong.

Television news showed violent waves pounding sea walls along China's coast. Reports said winds and rain damaged dikes, uprooted trees and brought down buildings along the Guangdong coast.

A Chinese rescue vessel deployed in the South China Sea saved eight sailors from a stranded Belgian-flagged freighter, then came to the aid of 24 Vietnamese fishermen, the official China Daily reported.

The rescue ship, Dejin, reached the 1,000-ton Pompei Thursday afternoon, a day after the freighter's engines failed off the Pratas, or Dongsha, islands, the newspaper said, citing the government's Salvage and Rescue Bureau. After bringing the crew on board and towing the Pompei, the Dejin went to help the Vietnamese, giving them food, fuel and water, the newspaper said.

Chanchu, which means "pearl" in Cantonese, headed out to sea shortly before midnight Thursday, just southeast of the commercial hub of Shanghai, which on Friday enjoyed unusually fresh breezes and clear skies.

T.C. Lee, an official with the Hong Kong Observatory, said Chanchu was the "most intense" typhoon on record to strike in the South China Sea in May, an early month in the annual cyclone season.

Lee said the early arrival of the year's first typhoon does not necessarily portend an unusually active storm season, and said the observatory forecast an average year of six to eight typhoons affecting the territory.

But a Chinese meteorologist quoted by Xinhua, Ding Yihui of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the storm appeared to be a sign of increasingly extreme weather events, a phenomena some scientists have linked to rising global temperatures.