Accidents in Chinese coal mines killed 931 people last year, a top work safety official said Tuesday, continuing a decline in fatalities as Beijing grapples to improve standards in the under-regulated sector.

China is the world's largest producer of coal and accidents are common throughout the industry with often corrupt bosses seeking profits over worker safety.

"The situation has been greatly improved", Yang Dongliang, director of the State Administration of Work Safety, said on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC), the Communist-controlled legislature.

The 2014 figure announced by Wang represents an 11 percent decrease on 2013 when authorities said 1,049 people were killed in mines. That number was a 24 percent drop from the previous year.

But some rights groups argue the actual figures are significantly higher due to under-reporting by mining companies.

Last November, 11 people died in a coal mine explosion in the southwestern province of Guizhou when 19 miners were working underground.

The accident came a day after a fire at a coal mine in Liaoning province in the northeast that killed 26 people.