“They appear to have got rid of the most dangerous, nasty, polluting and unregulated small scale coal mines and instead of 80,000 or 100,000 there are now 10,000 or something,” said Philip Andrews-Speed, an expert on Chinese coal and and associate fellow of Chatham House.
Government statistics show that the number of deaths in coalmines fell from almost 7,000 people in 2002 to 1,970 last year. So far this year China has reported over 500 coal-mining accidents in which over 800 lives have been lost.
But officials admit the situation remains still dire.
Last Friday Huang Yi, a spokesperson for the State Administration of Work Safety, told a news conference China’s coal mine death rate was “still 10 times the rate in the United States.”
"China’s coal mines are vulnerable to natural disasters and other dangers such as gas, geostatic pressure and terrestrial heat, and half of them have high levels of gas,” Mr Huang said, according to Xinhua.
On Thursday morning, as rescuers raced to locate survivors, Xinhua reported that the owner of the Xiaojiawan coal mine was being questioned by police.
