China has drastically improved its ability to avoid safety risks at workplaces ranging from chemical plants to coal mines, with the number of accidents falling for the 10th straight year, a Chinese official said on Tuesday.

At one of a series of press conferences dubbed "China in the past decade," Zhou Xuewen, vice minister of the Ministry of Emergency Management, said the country has made historic achievements in the field of emergency management. 

According to Zhou, the number of workplace accidents in 2021 was halved compared to 2012, while the fatalities caused by these accidents dropped by 45.9 percent.

From 2013 to 2021, the annual average number of deaths and missing persons from natural disasters, collapsed houses and the proportion of direct economic loss in gross domestic product (GDP), decreased by 87.2 percent, 87.4 percent, and 61.7 percent respectively when compared to the stint between 2000 and 2012, Zhou said.