Casualties from natural disasters, workplace accidents fall sharply

China has seen a significant drop of casualties from workplace accidents and natural disasters in recent years, and efforts will be beefed up in major high-risk sectors such as the chemical industry to further improve the situation, according to a senior emergency management official.

After a continuous decline of both the number of workplace accidents and their casualties for 16 consecutive years, "the annual death toll of workplace accidents in the country plummeted from a peak of almost 140,000 in 2002 to 34,000 last year," Sun Huashan, vice-minister of emergency management, said at a news conference organized by the State Council Information Office on Wednesday.

The country also experienced a great drop in casualties from natural disasters. On average, about 7,200 people were killed or left missing in disasters annually in the initial years after the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949.