A newborn baby boy was rescued from a sewage pipe in a Chinese apartment building after being flushed down a toilet, state media said.

"Fortunately the baby survived. But the person (who abandoned him) is still suspected of attempted murder," said an unnamed police officer, according to the official news portal hangzhou.com.cn.

Residents in Jinhua, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, called firefighters after hearing the two-day-old baby crying in the fourth-floor squat lavatory, the report said yesterday.

Attempts to pull him out failed, so rescuers sawed away a section of the 10-centimetre diameter pipe with the baby inside and took him to a local hospital.

Firefighters and doctors spent nearly an hour taking the tube apart piece by piece with pliers and saws and finally recovered the newborn, whose placenta was still attached, the report said.

From the time he was found to when he was taken out, the baby was stuck in the tube for at least two hours, it added.

The 2.3-kilogram boy suffered some cuts to his face and limbs and his heart rate was low at one point. He was put in an incubator and was in stable condition, the report said.

Police were still looking for his parents, it said. Chinese families traditionally have a preference for sons, but babies born out of wedlock are sometimes abandoned because of social and financial pressures. The country's one-child policy can also mean heavy fines for couples who have more than one baby.