The government estimates the powerful quake has already killed some 50,000 people, and the chance of finding survivors buried in the rubble is diminishing by the hour.

Across the southwest province of Sichuan, teams of soldiers, volunteers and medics are clawing through mounds of shattered concrete that were once homes, schools and factories.

"Quake relief work has entered into the most crucial phase," President Hu Jintao said after flying to Mianyang, one of the cities worst hit in Monday's 7.9-magnitude quake.

"The challenge is still severe, the task is still arduous and the time is pressing," he said, quoted by China's state-run Xinhua news agency.

The epic scale of the quake -- which rattled buildings across China and in cities as far away as Thailand and Vietnam -- has become clearer after teams hiked their way through to remote towns cut off by landslides.

Amidst the desolation there have been small miracles -- a child was pulled alive Friday out of a ruined school in Beichuan, some 80 hours after the quake struck, and rescuers said they could still hear weak cries for help.

But increasingly, rescuers have been dragging out bloodied bodies, bringing a new problem of disposal in communities that have almost nothing left.

After initially rebuffing offers of foreign aid teams, China has agreed to rescuers from Japan, Russia, Singapore and South Korea, and has issued a mass appeal for tens of thousands of shovels, hammers and cranes.

A Japanese team, the first to arrive, headed into a town where hundreds of families are reported buried, and a second Japanese team with sniffer dogs was en route.

South Korea is sending 44 experts and Singapore a team of 55 who helped in the aftermath of quakes in Indonesia, Pakistan and after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

They are bringing sniffer dogs, fibre-optic scopes, life detector systems and hydraulic cutters and spreaders.

Xinhua quoted a foreign ministry official saying it was the first time that China's government had accepted foreign professionals for a domestic disaster rescue and relief operation.

State television, quoting figures from national quake relief headquarters, said the government estimates more than 50,000 dead.

The official confirmed death toll in worst-hit Sichuan province is 19,500, but several tens of thousands more are lying under debris.

Whole towns have been flattened, mountainsides sheared off, roads split in two, and countless thousands of buildings toppled or in danger of collapse.

Agonisingly, close to 7,000 of them have been schools, where entire floors crashed down on each other and buried children in their classrooms.

Responding to public anger, China's housing ministry launched a probe into why so many crumbled, promising severe punishment for anyone responsible for shoddy construction.

The military, which has been spearheading rescue efforts, has scaled up its deployment, sending in extra transport planes, helicopters and troops.

They have been air-dropping tens of thousands of food packets, clothes and blankets, clearing roads, repairing bridges, sifting through the wreckage and ferrying the injured to hospital.

Rescue teams have also headed in from Taiwan -- which China considers to be part of its territory -- and Hong Kong.

Bai Licheng, a senior Communist Party official in Sichuan's Aba prefecture, warned of the risk of disease as bodies rot in the warmth.

"We are in urgent need of body bags," he said in Yingxiu. "Air-dropped food and drinking water are limited, and far from meeting the demand."

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the tremor was the "most destructive" the country had known since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949 -- more powerful than the 1976 Tangshan disaster, which claimed 240,000 lives.

Separately, the government was reported to be drawing up evacuation plans amid concerns that dams could collapse if rain persists.

The risk is especially acute in areas such as the counties of Wenchuan and Beichuan near the earthquake epicentre, state media said.

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