Shanghai braces for direct hit from Typhoon Bebinca

Shanghai halted transportation links, recalled ships and shut tourism spots including Shanghai Disney Resort on Sunday as it braced for Typhoon Bebinca, in what could be the strongest tropical cyclone to hit the Chinese financial hub since 1949.

The Category 1 typhoon, packing maximum sustained wind speeds near its centre of around 144 kilometres per hour was about 500km southeast of Shanghai as of 1pm local time (5pm NZT). It was expected to make landfall along China's eastern coast after midnight on Monday.

The strongest storm to make landfall in Shanghai in recent decades was Typhoon Gloria in 1949, which tore through the city with gusts of 144km/h. Shanghai was last threatened by a direct hit in 2022 by the powerful Typhoon Muifa, which instead landed 300km away in the city of Zhoushan, in Zhejiang province.

Shanghai is typically spared the strong typhoons that hit further south in China, including Yagi, a destructive Category 4 storm that roared past southern Hainan province last week. But Shanghai and neighbouring provinces are taking no chances with Category 1 Bebinca.

Resorts in Shanghai, including Shanghai Disney Resort, Jinjiang Amusement Park and Shanghai Wild Animal Park, have been temporarily closed while most ferries have been halted to and from Chongming Island - China's third-biggest island known as "the gateway to the Yangtze River".

More than 600 flights to and from Shanghai were also cancelled, according to local media.

In Zhejiang, ships had been recalled while several parks in the provincial capital Hangzhou announced closures.

Bebinca's arrival will coincide with the Mid-Autumn festival, a nationwide three-day holiday when many Chinese travel or engage in outdoor activities.

China's Ministry of Water Resources on Saturday issued a Level-IV emergency response - the lowest level in China's four-tier emergency response system - for potential flooding in Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui.

- Reuters