Coal mine accidents are far too common in China, according to Da Sulin, a professor of management and politics at Nanjing University, who thinks poor management is partially to blame.

Da says coal mining in China is more dangerous than elsewhere in the world, and more dangerous than it has to be.

Coal mining accidents in China claimed an average of 5,968 lives per year between 1991 and 2000, at least 25 times the rate in such countries as South Africa, India, Russia, or the US. Calculated another way, China had 5.077 deaths per million tons of coal production, six times the rate in Russia and an astonishingly 141 times the rate in the US.