TAIPEI - A TYPHOON which brought down parts of two bridges and dumped as much as 1,400mm of rain in parts of Taiwan killed at least seven people with 14 missing, rescue workers and newspapers said on Tuesday.

One person died when a car plunged into a frothing river from a two-lane segment of a collapsed bridge in Taichung county in central Taiwan, government disaster workers said.

Six people were missing in the bridge accident that has dominated TV coverage with images of sobbing relatives and simulated re-enactments of the bridge collapse.

Others died in mudslides, traffic accidents and a tunnel collapse, government disaster workers and local media said.

Twenty people have been injured around the island as incessant rain triggered hundreds of mudslides and caused rain-swollen creeks to burst their banks.

Sinlaku had brought sustained winds of 126kmh with gusts of up to 162kmh on Sunday with rain keeping up through Monday.

The centre of the storm was 550km northeast of Taiwan at on Tuesday morning. Meteorological service Tropical Storm Risk had downgraded Sinlaku to a tropical storm as it headed for southern Japan.

Agricultural losses were estimated at NT$280 million (S$12.44 million) and likely to pressure Taiwan's inflation as food prices rise.

'It's going to be a bit higher in September, but this typhoon won't be a big hit since it didn't get to south-central Taiwan, just the north,' said Mr Daniel Luo, an analyst with Jih Sun Bank in Taipei. Taiwan's major crops are in the south.

In China, heavy rains hit eastern and northern parts of Zhejiang province and central and northern parts of Fujian on Monday and then hit Shanghai in the afternoon.

Typhoons regularly hit China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan from August until the end of the year, gathering strength from the warm waters of the Pacific or the South China Sea before weakening over land.