Mentally handicapped people are being forced to work at brick factories in the central province of Hubei every day, morning to night, for just 208 yuan a year (less than the weekly minimum wage in Shenzhen), according to a news report broadcast this week on Shanghai-based Dragon TV. The local authorities in Hubei countered in a Wuhan Evening News report the same day (25 January) that they had already launched a campaign to “rectify illegal employment and crackdown on criminal behaviour."

China cut mining deaths by almost a fifth last year, according to state media, despite a spate of disasters towards the end of the year. The coal industry is one of the world's deadliest, but a government safety drive has closed thousands of mines and slashed the toll from 6,027 in 2004 to 2,631 in 2009 – still equivalent to more than seven a day.

China’s coal mine safety watchdog, the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety (SACMS), reported on 19 January that both the number of accidents and deaths in the country’s coal mines fell by around 20 percent last year. The number of deaths decreased from 3,215 in 2008 to 2,631 in 2009. And the number of accidents fell by 338 to 1,616, Xinhua quoted SACMS director Zhao Tiechui as saying.

At 1.50am on November 21, a safety officer in the Xinxing coal mine in Heilongjiang noticed a sharp swing on his instrument that measures underground gas. He sent an alarm, advising evacuation of the 528 men at work. Forty minutes later, an explosion rocked the mine, leaving 104 dead and 65 injured. It was the worst coal-mine accident in China since 107 were killed in the Hongtong mine in Shanxi in December 2007.

The bosses of a state-owned coal mine in the northeastern Chinese province of Heilongjiang were to blame for a recent underground gas explosion in which more than 100 people died, an initial investigation has revealed.

The huge Chinese coal mine blast that left 104 people dead has reignited concerns over the heavy human cost of the nation's voracious coal demand, with accidents still common despite a safety push.

Grieving relatives scuffled with police today as the death toll from China's worst mining disaster for almost two years rose to 104. Authorities said they feared another four workers who were trapped underground after a huge gas explosion at the mine on Saturday were already dead.

China Labour Bulletin extends its utmost sympathy and heartfelt condolences to the families of the more than one hundred miners who lost their lives in the Hegang tragedy early on the morning of 21 November 2009.

An explosion at an illegal firecracker workshop in Guangxi has left 13 village school children dead and injured. All the victims were “left-behind children” whose parents were working in factories hundreds of kilometers away in neighbouring Guangdong.

CLB director Han Dongfang argues that moves by the authorities in Shanxi to close and merge small privately-run mines with larger state-run mines will only improve coal mine safety if miners are allowed to play a key role in safety management. Photograph by andi808.