Almost 180,000 people have been stranded in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan by a return of snow and freezing weather which has blocked roads and caused blackouts, state media said yesterday.

More than 14,000 kilometres of roads have been affected and 20,000 vehicles are stuck, the official Xinhua news agency said.

"The provincial transport department has organised a repair working force to ensure smooth road travel, especially the transport of important equipment and materials," Xinhua said.

"However, the repairs were greatly hampered by the plateau climate, poor facilities and shortage of money. The workers do not even have special anti-freeze or snow removing facilities," it added. Like much of southern and southwestern China, Yunnan had slowly been recovering from unseasonably cold, snowy weather which brought transport to a near standstill ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday and left millions without power.

The government is also struggling to bring the electricity grid back up in the eastern Yunnan city of Qujing. China said last week it aimed to complete repairs to power lines and restore normal power supply by the end of March.

Almost 90 per cent of people who had experienced power cuts in large swathes of the country are now reconnected, with more than 14,000 damaged power lines repaired, Xinhua added.