“The situation has been greatly improved,” State Administration of Work Safety director Yang Dongliang said of 2014.

It marks the first year with less than 1000 Chinese coal deaths in the modern era, according to Agence France-Presse.

However, while death rates are falling there is some uncertainty about the accuracy of the SAWS data.

“The 2014 figures appear inconsistent with the official reports that accidental deaths declined 14.3% from a year earlier, when 1049 miners were listed as killed or missing,”Eurasia Review commented.

“Based on that tally, deaths dropped 11.2%, or far less than the declines of 24% and 30% reported for 2013 and 2012.

“The 2014 toll rises to 978 if the calculations follow SAWS figures for deaths per million metric tons of coal mined, based on National Bureau of Statistics reports that China produced 3.87 billion metric tons of coal last year.”

The Chinese government is assumed to have widely reduced fatalities by forcing small coal operations to close.