Thirty people suffered severe injuries, Xinhua said.
The quake was followed by eight aftershocks and the provincial civil affairs department was sending 4,500 tents, 3,000 quilts and other relief materials to Yao'an, Xinhua said.
Hundreds of police were dispatched to the disaster zone.
Yunnan is a quake-prone, mountainous region that lies on China's southern border with Thailand and Myanmar. It also borders Sichuan province, where a magnitude-7.9 quake last year left almost 90,000 people dead or missing.
In 1988, a 7.1-magnitude quake in Yunnan near Myanmar killed 930 people. More than 15,000 people died after a magnitude-7.7 earthquake in the province in 1970, though authorities at the time covered up information on casualties and damage amid the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.
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