BEIJING (CNN) -- China was evacuating 330,000 people Friday from land along the raging Yangtze River that officials were preparing to sacrifice to flooding to safeguard cities downstream.

With the Yangtze at record levels and threatening to rise further, officials were preparing to open floodgates and even blow up a dike to divert floodwaters away from one of the most threatened sections of the 3,900-mile-long river.

The decision whether to deliberately flood towns and villages at the Yangtze's Jingjiang section, in badly flooded central Hubei province, would require the approval of China's State Council, or Cabinet.

"The worst moment of the year's flood control efforts is probably coming," the official newspaper China Daily quoted unidentified Yangtze River officials as saying.

The crisis was precipitated by a surge of floodwaters headed down river Friday that officials feared could cause sodden levees weakened by weeks of rain and floods to collapse.

A major dike protecting the city of Jiujiang, down the Yangtze in southeast Jiangxi province, burst Friday, a witness said. A city Flood Control official confirmed a breach, but said he had no details. A provincial flood official said the dike was thought to be a main Yangtze dike.

Another levee breach near the city on Tuesday killed two people, the Xinhua News Agency said.

To reduce pressure on major levees that protect cities and millions of people downstream, officials have already begun abandoning smaller dikes and were preparing for the possibility of deflecting waters into the Jingjiang flood diversion area, where more than 500,000 people live.

Torrential rains have lashed central and eastern China for weeks, pushing rivers and lakes to their highest levels since 1954 and triggering devastating floods that have killed more than 2,000 people, the Ministry of Civil Affairs has said.

The floods have affected 240 million people -- a fifth of China's population and roughly equal to that of the United States -- of whom some 13.8 million have fled to safer areas, the ministry has said.

More than 330,000 people in the Jingjiang flood diversion area south of Hubei's Shashi city were being moved out, said Chen Zhichao, director of the Jinjiang Flood Diversion Management Bureau.

Of those, 230,000 had already been moved and another 100,000 should be moved out by Friday evening, officials said. The remainder of the 520,000 people who reside in the area live on high or protected ground and are safe, Chen said.

He said they were waiting for an order from the State Council before diverting the river.

Authorities abandoned five dikes near Hubei's Jinzhou city on Thursday and Friday, evacuating 100,000 people from the area, a Hubei flood control official said.

The China Daily said the bodies of five soldiers and eight civilians had been recovered after a dike burst in Hubei's Jiayu county on Saturday, washing away 200 people.

Two people died and 40,000 were stranded when another levee collapsed in Jiujiang city in eastern Jiangxi province on Tuesday, the official Xinhua news agency said.

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Meanwhile, central Anhui province braced for an onslaught of water from two sides as the Yangtze swell closed in from the west and Typhoon Otto roared in from the east, The China Daily said.

In central Hunan province, 2.3 million soldiers and civilians were reinforcing flood defenses to prepare for the arrival of the Yangtze flood peak and the typhoon, the paper said.

Xinhua quoted meteorologists as saying Typhoon Otto had lost some of its force and was unlikely to cause strong winds and rains in China over the next few days.

But they forecast five to seven typhoons will hit China in the next three months, Xinhua said.

Summer floods, an annual scourge, have this year destroyed 5.58 million houses and damaged 11.8 million acres of crops, causing at least $4.8 billion in damage, the Ministry of Civil Affairs has said.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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