TAIPEI, Taiwan >> China and Taiwan are telling residents to brace for a typhoon expected to hit the Chinese coast Saturday.

Chinese officials expect severe damage when Muifa arrives in Zhejiang province Saturday. Weather Underground forecasters say winds between 96 and 110 miles per hour were expected at landfall.

China’s Civil Affairs Ministry ordered storm alerts Thursday for the coastal provinces of Zhejiang, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Fujian, and Shandong and inland Anhui and Jiangxi provinces.

Chinese officials have recalled thousands of fishing boats and ordered rescue crews to stand by.

Taiwanese officials say the typhoon was 447 miles east of Taipei on Thursday afternoon. They say ships off Taiwan’s northern coast and residents on the eastern coast should watch out for high waves.

Muifa is blamed for four deaths in the Philippines when it passed near northern Luzon island’s east coast earlier in the week, headed for Japan and southern Taiwan. Two fish-pond workers drowned when their boat overturned north of Manila and two children died in a landslide amid fierce rain and wind in a sand quarrying site in central Bohol province over the weekend.