(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-08-08 16:58

More than 266,000 people working at sea have been recalled to land in east China's Fujian Province as tropical storms Pabuk and Wutip approached on Wednesday.

An official with the provincial flood control headquarters said all 50,401 fishing vessels had returned to harbor, while more than 266,000 fishery workers and sailors were back on land by 9:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Pabuk, named after a type of large freshwater fish in Laos, made landfall in south Taiwan on Wednesday morning. It is moving noth-northwest at a speed of 25 km per hour and is expected to land in Shantou, south China's Guangdong Province on Wednesday evening, according to the Fujian Meteorological Observatory.

The eighth tropical storm of this year Wutip, which means butterfly, came into being in the Pacific Ocean to the east of the Philipines at 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday.

Wutip, with its center at 20 degrees north and 125.2 degrees east, is moving northwest and is forecast to hit Fujian on Friday afternoon.

It would be more powerful than Pabuk, said Lin Xinbiao, deputy director of the Fujian Meteorology Observatory.

Eastern and southern China are regularly affected by tropical storms and typhoons in summer. Typhoons Bilis and Saomai claimed more than 1,000 lives in China last year.