BEIJING -- Chinese soldiers have been ordered to spearhead a massive cleanup of the typhoon-battered southern region following the strongest storm to hit China in more than five decades.

Some 214 people were killed and 163 remained missing in the wake of Typhoon Saomai, which slammed into China Thursday and raced across Fujian, Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces, the Xinhua News Agency said on Monday.

Packing winds of up to 270 kph (170 mph), Saomai uprooted trees and power lines, and left thousands of communities flattened and flooded.

The news agency said that People's Liberation Army soldiers had been ordered to repair roads, telecommunication lines, as well as electricity and water supply systems destroyed by Saomai and other recent storms.

Saomai, the Vietnamese name for the planet Venus, was the eighth major storm to hit China during an unusually violent typhoon season. Much of the southern region is still recovering from Tropical Storm Bilis, which killed more than 600 people last month.

Cities hardest-hit by Saomai were coastal Wenzhou, where at least 81 people were killed, and Fuding in Fujian province, where 41 people were killed and some 1,350 were reported injured.

In total, more than 50,000 houses were reportedly destroyed, with 56 provincial roads and national highways inundated and six cities hit by blackouts.

The storm also badly damaged a Buddhist temple built more than 1,000 years ago in Fuding, collapsing its gate house and 20 other buildings. The Ziguo temple suffered damages amounting to 5 million yuan (US$625,000; euro490,000), Xinhua quoted the temple's monks as saying.

Saomai killed at least two people in the Philippines earlier and dumped rain on Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The weather bureau said Saomai was the most powerful typhoon since its record-keeping began in 1949.

In 1956, a typhoon with winds up to 234 kph (145 mph) killed 4,900 people in Zhejiang.