Also Friday, Xinhua reported that eight miners suffocated to death on smoke from explosives detonated early Thursday during underground excavations at a lead-zinc mine in the northwestern Xinjiang region's Shanshan county.

Miners were sent back underground just two hours after the blast, before the smoke had cleared, the report said.

Disregard for routine safety precautions is a frequent cause of deaths in Chinese mines, where managers often sacrifice safety to boost production.

The report said rescue efforts were continuing, but didn't indicate whether any other miners were missing.

At least 20 other mine deaths were reported this week - including seven men trapped in the flooded Dongshan coal mine in the northeastern province of Liaoning.

Floods, cave-ins and explosions killed about 6,000 miners last year, or an average of 16 each day.

Despite the deaths, Xinhua cited a State Administration of Work Safety report as saying that tougher enforcement had reduced deaths in the industry by almost 30 percent between January 1 and May 21 compared to the same period last year.

No specific figures for mining were given. The report said a total of 40,896 people died from accidents in the workplace over the period, Xinhua said.

However, a spokeswoman for the administration who wouldn't give her name said it had released no such statistics. The figures that Xinhua said were on the administration's Web site were not there.

China plans to reduce its 21,000 coal mines by half through consolidation within the next four years as a means of improving management and safety, Xinhua quoted Huang Yi, spokesman for the State Administration of Work Safety, as saying.

Two-thirds of China's annual coal mine deaths occur in small mines with backward equipment and poor management, Xinhua said.