Typhoon Bavi hits Zhejiang, forcing nearly two million to evacuate

China evacuated more than 1.8 million people from Zhejiang province as Typhoon Bavi made landfall along the east coast, forcing a sweeping shutdown across one of the country’s busiest industrial belts. The storm came ashore in the Taizhou area after tracking toward Wenzhou, where the revised landfall zone was narrowed to stretch between Cangnan county and Sanmen county.

Zhejiang provincial authorities raised the typhoon emergency response to Level I, the highest alert, as Bavi approached on Saturday. Officials suspended classes, work, transport and outdoor activities across the province and canceled more than 400 flights along with dozens of train services.

The evacuation figures climbed through the day as local governments moved residents out of vulnerable coastal and low-lying areas. Earlier tallies had already passed 1.7 million, and before that more than 600,000, as evacuations continued.

Bavi was the ninth typhoon of 2026 and the second to affect China in about a week, after Typhoon Maysak struck southern China the previous weekend. That back-to-back sequence came while parts of southern and central China were still dealing with severe flooding and storm damage from earlier in the week, when at least 39 people died, dozens of rivers overflowed and a reservoir dam burst.

Before reaching China, Bavi battered Japan’s Sakishima island chain with heavy rain and violent winds and passed near northern Taiwan, where more than 14,000 people were evacuated. In Okinawa, the storm knocked out power to thousands and forced additional precautions across Japan’s southern islands.