China sees improvement in coal mine safety

China saw fewer coal mine accidents and deaths in the first eight months of this year, the country's coal mine safety watchdog said Monday.

The number of coal mine accidents declined 19.1 percent year-on-year in the Jan.-Aug. period while the death toll dropped 29.9 percent, the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety said in a statement on its website.

The death ratio per million tonne of coal output fell 35.2 percent year-on-year to 0.526 in that period, a historic low for the period, the statement quoted administration chief Zhao Tiechui as saying.

China's coal output rose 12 percent year-on-year in the first eight months, said Zhao.

The Chinese government last year ordered the country's coal mines to install mine monitoring equipment, pressure fans, water supplies and communications systems and to build emergency shelter systems to make the mines less deadly.

According to the administration's figures, 2,433 miners were killed in coal mine accidents in China in 2010, down from 2,631 deaths in 2009.

The number of all kinds of accidents in the country dropped 1.6 percent year-on-year in the Jan.-Aug. period, with the number of people killed in those accidents down 11.9 percent, said Zhao.