An open-pit copper mining area in Dexing, East China's Jiangxi Province on August 7, 2024 Photo: VCG

Multiple government agencies, including the Office of the Work Safety Committee of China's State Council, the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the Supreme People's Court, jointly launched a campaign on Monday to crack down on illegal activities and rectify regulatory violations in key sectors such as mining.

According to the joint notice, the move aims to urge local governments to further strengthen accountability, improve regulatory mechanisms and intensify enforcement of workplace safety supervision, in order to firmly prevent and curb major and especially serious accidents.

The notice states that all regions and relevant departments should strictly crack down on illegal and unlawful activities in key sectors such as mining and thoroughly address issues such as falsification and misconduct in the field of work safety.

It also calls for the rigorous implementation of responsibilities by local authorities and relevant departments.

Moreover, the notice calls for improving coordination and communication mechanisms between regions and departments, and accelerating the transformation of the safety production governance model toward a prevention-oriented approach.

The notice states that, in order to strictly crack down on illegal production and construction activities in the mining sector, regulate mining safety order, firmly prevent and curb major and especially serious accidents, and in light of conditions in the mining industry, the National Mine Safety Administration has taken the lead in formulating an action plan to combat illegal activities and rectify violations in the mining sector.

The new campaign to crack down on illegal activities and rectify violations by key national authorities reflects a systematic upgrade in the country's safety governance for high-risk industries such as mining, marking a further strengthening of safety production supervision from single-agency enforcement to coordinated, multi-department governance, Wu Chenhui, an industry analyst, told the Global Times on Monday.

A key policy direction of this initiative is the shift in safety governance from post-incident response to prior prevention, Wu said, noting that this not only helps reduce the likelihood of major and especially serious accidents, but also signals a transition from reactive responses to proactive risk management.

Wu added that promoting cross-regional and cross-departmental coordination mechanisms will help improve consistency and efficiency in law enforcement and further standardize mining safety order.

Global Times