This is the terrifying moment an earthquake rocked homes in China.

Residents experienced the first tremor of the year, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake, in Nanning, China, on January 2.

CCTV footage shows parents holding onto their children amid a brief shock.

In another video, shop owners can be seen fleeing their store with some of their products stacked on a shelf falling to the ground.

Following the earthquake, the Ningxia Fire and Rescue Corps and the Yinchuan Fire and Rescue Detachment mobilised heavy earthquake response teams, including 20 vehicles and 105 personnel, to the epicentre for assessment.

Currently, there are no reports of building collapses or casualties.

The tremor was also felt in Wuhai and Bayannur in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of the country.

The Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) said China accounts for one-third of the world's destructive continental earthquakes. Since 1900, more than 550,000 people have died in earthquakes in China, which is 53 per cent of the total casualties in earthquakes worldwide.