MANILA, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines said on Wednesday there is no tsunami heading towards it after a strong earthquake hit China's Taiwan Tuesday night.

    Renato Solidum, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS), denied some reports that a one-meter high tsunami is on its way to Basco, Batanes in the northernmost part of the Philippine islands, adding the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii did not release a tsunami warning.

    Meanwhile, Solidum advised people living in low-lying areas to move to higher ground as a precaution, as earthquakes of this scale sometimes generate tsunamis that can be destructive along coasts located within 100 kilometers of the earthquake epicenter.

    The earthquake's epicenter was 892 kilometers north of Manila, but it is very near Batanes.

    Japan's Meteorological Agency had said there could be a tsunami hitting Batannes, but later it said there was no longer any danger of a destructive tsunami.

    The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake hitting Taiwan Tuesday evening was registered magnitude 7.1, but Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau measured it at 6.7.

    A quake with a magnitude of 5.8 was recorded in Basco, northern Philippines at 20:28 p.m. local time (12:28 GMT) Tuesday, while another earthquake measuring magnitude 6.0 was recorded at 08:34 p.m. (12:34 GMT), according to local media reports.

    The tsunami threat and the earthquake Tuesday took place exactly two years after a devastating earthquake and tsunami disaster that hit several Asian countries, killing hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.