Typhoon Dolphin batters Japan, threatens China coast as ports shut

Typhoon Dolphin crossed into Japan's southern islands on Saturday with the force of a sustained punch. The storm brought winds that held steady at 162 kilometres per hour, with gusts that spiked to 216 kph—fast enough to knock people down. In Okinawa and the nearby Amami island region of Kagoshima prefecture, six people were injured, most of them elderly residents who lost their footing in the violent wind. None faced life-threatening harm, but the injuries underscored how indiscriminate the storm's power was. More visible was the blackout: nearly 39,000 buildings lost electricity in Kagoshima alone, with another 12,000 going dark across Okinawa. The typhoon had already begun its next move—tracking westward toward China's coast, where it was forecast to make landfall sometime between late Sunday and early Monday local time.

China's meteorological authorities were watching closely. They classified Dolphin as an orange-category typhoon, the second-highest designation in their warning system, and elevated the national emergency response level to III—the second-lowest tier. The expected strike zone stretched across a critical stretch of coastline: somewhere between Zhoushan in Zhejiang province and Fuding in Fujian province. When it arrived, the storm was predicted to carry winds of 38 to 45 metres per second near its core. The National Marine Forecasting Center issued its most severe alert for waves, predicting swells of five to eight metres in the waters off Zhejiang through Sunday afternoon. Shanghai and northern Fujian could see waves of three to five and a half metres under a lower-level orange warning.

The economic stakes were substantial. Zhejiang is one of China's largest provincial economies, a manufacturing and export powerhouse that feeds global supply chains. On Saturday, authorities there raised their coastal typhoon alert to maximum and shut down port operations entirely. Ningbo Lishe International Airport announced it would suspend all flights on Sunday. Shanghai's Yangshan port, one of the world's busiest container terminals, had already been cleared of vessels by late Friday. Some rail services across the Yangtze River Delta region would halt from Sunday onward. Fishing boats were ordered back to harbour. Ferries across eastern and southern China were suspended. Construction work in vulnerable areas stopped.

The weather itself promised to be relentless. Rain and strong winds were forecast to pummel eastern China through August 12. Some locations could experience sudden bursts of rainfall exceeding 80 millimetres per hour, accompanied by thunderstorms and wind gusts that would test every structure in their path. Chinese authorities issued five separate weather and disaster warnings on Saturday evening alone—orange alerts for typhoon, heavy rain, and geological hazards, plus a red alert for mountain torrents. Beijing's government said it was monitoring the storm's trajectory and preparing flood-control and evacuation plans for the capital, though the typhoon's primary impact zone lay further south and east.

Taiwan, positioned between the storm's origin and its destination, felt the disruption immediately. The government cancelled 78 flights, mostly international services, as a precaution. Heavy rain was expected in the island's northern regions over the weekend, though authorities had not yet ordered evacuations as of Saturday. The storm also became a flashpoint in the long-running dispute over the Taiwan Strait. China issued an order requiring ships passing through the waterway to follow its traffic control instructions—a move Taipei condemned as absurd, asserting that Beijing has no authority over international waters. The strait remains one of the world's most contested pieces of ocean, with China claiming Taiwan as its territory and both Taipei and Washington rejecting that claim. Even a typhoon could not depoliticize the geography.