One firefighter died after inhaling toxic fumes while battling the fire at the Mandarin Oriental's nearly finished flagship hotel inside the CCTV complex that began on Monday night and raged for more than five hours, officials said.

Seven other people were injured, but the Mandarin Oriental said no one was in the hotel when the fire started, indicating the death toll was unlikely to climb sharply.

The 159-metre (524-foot) tall hotel was just 200 hundred metres from the futuristic CCTV tower that has quickly won fame as one of Beijing's most stunning buildings and a striking symbol of China's new-found global power.

Both buildings were designed by renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas' Office of Metropolitan Architecture and due to open this year.

City government officials said the exterior of the hotel had been severely damaged, while the external walls of the 234-metre (770-foot) CCTV tower were burnt but its structure was not harmed.

In a public relations disaster for CCTV, which is one of the ruling Communist Party's chief propaganda arms, authorities said the station defied police warnings and set off powerful fireworks in the complex.

"The owner caused the fire because it violated regulations and set off fireworks at the construction site," Zhu Xu, a spokesman with the Beijing government, told AFP.

CCTV staff recorded the fireworks show, which involved pyrotechnics far stronger than the public is allowed to use, the official Xinhua news agency quoted Beijing Fire Control Bureau Luo Yuan as saying.

"Owners of the property ignored policemen's warnings that such fireworks were not allowed," Luo said, according to Xinhua. He said the people who set off the fireworks were being detained for questioning.

Fireworks had erupted right across Beijing on Monday night to celebrate the Lantern Festival that marks the official end of the Lunar New Year celebrations.

Letting off fireworks on Lunar New Year's Eve, which fell on January 25 this year, and throughout the festive period is a long-held Chinese tradition based on the belief that the noise will ward off evil spirits and ghosts.

But it is also a notoriously dangerous practice, and was as such banned in Beijing between 1994 and 2005.

The ban in Beijing was lifted due to popular demand, following similar moves in 200 Chinese cities a year earlier, and the past two weeks had seen one of the most intense fireworks frenzies yet across the city.

The Mandarin Oriental's website said the 241-room hotel was to be the group's flagship property in China and one of Beijing's most luxurious hotels.

However its statement about the fire said it did not own the building, and was only contracted to run the hotel.

The CCTV complex, built at a cost of five billion yuan (710 million dollars), was among many amazing developments to rise ahead of last year's Beijing Olympics.

Some had described the CCTV tower as one of the most daring pieces of architecture ever attempted.

Two cantilevered arms edge towards each other from twin towers that lean over at a sharp angle, with 10,000 steel beams locking the structure together.

Other landmarks include Swiss architects Herzog and De Meuron's Bird's Nest main Olympic stadium, and the bubble-wrapped "Water Cube."

French architect Paul Andreu designed the National Grand Theatre, renowned for a massive titanium-tinted dome.

And an enormous new airport terminal designed by British architect Norman Foster opened last year.

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