China's coal production safety record has improved over the past 10 years, with annual fatalities at coal mines falling from a peak of 6,995 deaths in 2002 to 2,631 in 2009, according to Zhao Tiechui, head of the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety (SACMS).

Zhao said China reported over 20 major coal mine accidents (with death toll of more than 10) in 2009, much less than the peak of 70. For each 1 million tonnes of coal produced, the mortality rate has fallen from 5.4 to less than 1 in 2009.

Zhao, however, warned that China's coal mines were still accident-prone and the world's largest coal-producing country still faced a difficult task in improving its coal mine safety.

He said China, which set up the SACMS 10 years ago to improve the safety conditions of coal mines nationwide, would still need another 10 years to "fundamentally improve" China's coal production safety record.

Zhao said China's coal-dominated energy mix would not change drastically in the next several decades and the country's coal production was expected to surpass 3.1 billion tonnes in 2010.

"Coal mine safety is still a big problem," he said. "Awareness of safety and rule of law is still low in some coal-rich areas and some coal enterprises."

China's annual coal production jumped from just over 1 billion tonnes in 2000 to almost three billion tonnes in 2009. Currently 70 percent of China's primary energy generation comes from coal.

With regards to safety, the complicating factor was that around 90 percent of more than 10,000 coal mines in China were small, and their safety record was far worse than large operations, he said.

For each 1 million tonnes of coal produced, the death toll at small mines is eight times that of large state-owned ones.

In 2009, coal produced by small mines accounted for 35 percent of national total, but the accidents and fatalities at them accounted for nearly 70 percent of the total, Zhao said.

He said 1,088 small coal mines were closed last year, and a total of 13,000 small coal mines had been shut down since 2005.

(Xinhua News Agency February 13, 2010)