China flood toll rises to 567

There was no immediate official word on the economic impact of storms forecast for Guangdong province, which borders Hong Kong and is China's most populous region with more than 100 million people. But state media said road and railway traffic in some areas was cut, including the main Beijing-Hong Kong railroad.

Major flooding across China this year has so far wreaked economic losses valued at 22.9 billion yuan (2.76 billion dollars), with more than 44 million people affected, the civic affairs ministry's flood headquarters said.

At least 2.45 million people have been evacuated. Nationwide, rain-related deaths were reported in 22 of China's 31 provinces and regions, it said.

In Guangdong, at least 48 people have been killed and 120,000 forced to flee their homes, state television reported on its midday news Friday.

So far, most damage in Guangdong appears to be to farms, with export-oriented factories largely unaffected, said Ruby Zhu, China economist for the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce.

"It doesn't seem serious now," she said. "But if it gets more serious, we're not sure what will happen in Guangdong province."

Nationwide, a total of 137 people are missing, Xinhua said.

Authorities in Macau, the former Portuguese colony west of Hong Kong at the mouth of the Pearl River, issued a flood warning, saying the rain-swollen river could rise to as much as three feet above normal, Xinhua said.

The death toll was higher than most of the rainy seasons of the past decade, though still below that of 1998, when 4,150 people were killed in summer flooding in central and northeastern China, Xinhua said.

China suffers hundreds of flooding deaths every summer in its south and northeast.