Beijing - An earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale hit Wenchuan county in south-western China's Sichuan province Monday, the government and local officials said. The earthquake struck at 2:28 pm (0628 GMT) and could be felt in cities hundreds of kilometres away, including Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Bangkok.
"Major tremors" were felt by residents of cities closer to the epicentre, including Sichuan's capital, Chengdu, and nearby Chongqing, the official news agency Xinhua said.
The epicentre was about 95 kilometres west-north-west from Chengdu in Wenchuan county, which has a population of 112,000.
Initial reports put the magnitude at 7.6 but the State Seismological Bureau later upgraded it to 7.8.
There were no immediate reports of major damage or casualties.
Xinhua quoted a worker in Chongqing as saying his factory was evacuated after the roof began to crack, and a resident of Sichuan's Leshan city who said a garden wall had collapsed.
Mobile telephone services were briefly cut off in Chengdu and Chongqing, while workers were evacuated from some major office towers in Shanghai, the agency said.
In Hong Kong, people rang emergency services in panic when the earthquake made ground shake and buildings sway in the city of 6.9 million, 1,360 kilometres from Chengdu. There were no reports of injuries of damage in Hong Kong.
A tremor measuring 3.9 on the Richter scale was recorded in Beijing's eastern suburb of Tongzhou at 2:35 pm, the seismological bureau said.
Earlier Monday, an undersea earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale shook Taiwan. There were no reports of damage or casualties from the quake that struck at 10:43 am (0243 GMT), 3.4 kilometres under the sea off Taiwan's eastern Orchid Island, the Seismological Observation Centre said.
Seismologists in Taiwan said the two earthquakes were unrelated.
