CORRECTED: China steels for worse weather as holidays loom

Corrects paragraph 3 to Hunan, not Henan

By John Ruwitch

SHAOGUAN, China (Reuters) - Work crews battled on Saturday to restore power to parts of southern China blacked out for over a week by the fiercest snow storms in 50 years as the government warned that worse was to come.

Mobilizing the might of the state, China has deployed more than 300,000 troops and nearly 1.1 million militia and army reservists to help keep traffic moving and ensure power supplies, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Repair teams were working flat out to restore power to the southern province of Hunan, one of the worst-hit areas. Chenzhou, a city of 4 million, has been without electricity for eight days and petrol and food supplies are running low.

"We will strive to partially restore electricity supply in Chenzhou on Saturday," Xinhua quoted Yin Jijun, an official with China's national grid, as saying.

Fresh falls of snow started to blanket central, south and east China on Friday, prompting the government to warn that the weather crisis had yet to peak.

"The most difficult period is still not over yet. The situation remains grim," the cabinet said in a summary of an emergency meeting to coordinate relief efforts.

As much as 15 cm (6 inches) of snow covered Shanghai, the financial capital, on Saturday while the neighboring provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang issued alerts for blizzards and icy roads. Beijing was once again cold but clear.

The government said the disaster, which has killed 60 and doomed millions to a cold dark Lunar New Year holiday next week, was still unfolding.

Premier Wen Jiabao visited Hunan province on Friday for the second time in a week. State television showed him telling officials to redouble their efforts to restore basic services.

Wen told his cabinet that officials at all levels had to do more solid work "to ensure economic and social stability" in the face of the disaster, Xinhua reported.

Prices of vegetables in particular are rising sharply because of the freak weather. With inflation already near an 11-year high, officials are worried about the potential for unrest.

Some 8,000 freight trains have been delayed in the past week as toppled power lines and icy rails crippled the rail network, triggering the country's most serious power crisis ever.

The government has put the immediate economic losses of the weather chaos at $7.5 billion. It says that 223,000 houses have been toppled by snow or ice and 862,000 damaged.

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