At least 15 people have been killed and hundreds more injured as Typhoon Maysak and severe storm systems batter multiple regions of China, prompting mass evacuations and pushing emergency authorities to their highest alert levels. President Xi Jinping has called for "all-out efforts" to rescue those affected, as forecasters warn that torrential rains are set to continue in the coming days.

The hardest-hit area has been Nanning, the capital of Guangxi — an autonomous region in China's deep south that borders Vietnam — where flooding linked to Maysak killed at least four people and forced some 62,000 residents to evacuate. Waters overflowed or broke through barriers at three reservoirs, and dramatic footage broadcast by state media showed a torrent of muddy water rushing through the crumbled wall of one reservoir dam. Officials raised the flood control emergency response to its highest level, citing "extremely heavy rain" that threatened to hamper rescue efforts. In the nearby city of Guigang, roughly 270 kilometres away, floodwaters turned a wide road into a lake, submerging cars and cascading in brown torrents down a hillside. Further south in Fangchenggang, videos verified by journalists showed a small car being swept down a street.

Separately, severe convective weather — a meteorological term for intense storm systems driven by rapidly rising warm air — struck the central province of Hubei on Monday, killing 11 people and leaving one missing. Tornadoes were reported in some areas, and 275 people were injured in Huanggang district alone. Authorities evacuated hundreds of residents to safety as rescue workers in life vests and inflatable boats searched for survivors.

Maysak made its first landfall on Hainan, China's southern island province, on Friday, before crossing the South China Sea and striking northern Vietnam — which shares a border with Guangxi — on Sunday. In the Vietnamese border city of Mong Cai, the storm toppled trees and ripped metal roofs from buildings before pushing inland into China. Meteorologists note that as the typhoon weakens over land, it dumps the moisture it gathered crossing the sea, prolonging heavy rainfall across Guangxi, Guizhou, Hunan and neighbouring regions — areas that together are home to more than 150 million people.

China is also tracking Super Typhoon Bavi, currently crossing the western Pacific with winds of up to 180 miles per hour, which weather authorities expect will bring further strong winds and heavy rain to eastern China from Thursday. The back-to-back storms underscore what analysts describe as a growing threat from extreme weather events, which meteorologists increasingly link to the climate crisis and which risk wiping out tens of billions of dollars in economic activity each year through flooding, disrupted industry and damaged crops.