Residents in the city said they had felt the quake, but there was no visible damage. Closer to the epicentre, in the county of Qushui, buildings trembled and windows rattled but a hospital official said there were no reports of any injuries.

"It lasted for around one minute and there was an aftershock about fifteen minutes later," said Zhang Dong, who works in the office of the director of Qushui County Hospital.

"The building is still fine but windows trembled loudly. Nobody is hurt around us so far."

It came the day after a quake in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan killed 70 and flattened a village, and the same day as another strong quake in Afghanistan.

China is also still smarting from the memory of the massive Sichuan earthquake, which killed at least 80,000 and devastated whole towns on May 12.

Tibet's seismological department sent a team to the area and local officials planned a briefing in the evening, but there was no damage reported at cultural sites like the Potala Palace, the Dalai Lama's traditional seat, the official Xinhua agency said.

Just after midnight local time a magnitude 5.7 quake hit an area near China's western border with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, about 20 minutes after the Kyrgyzstan tremor.

Four homes collapsed and more than 200 were damaged, but nobody was hurt, Xinhua reported. (Reporting by Jason Subler and Beijing newsroom; Writing by Emma Graham-Harrison; Editing by Bill Tarrant)