BEIJING, March 10 -- The number of deaths resulted from coal mine accidents in China dropped to 931 last year, Yang Dongliang, director of the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS), said Tuesday.

The figure represented a sharp decline of 86.7 percent from about 7,000 in the year of 2002, which registered the biggest number of annual coal mine accidents, Yang said at a press conference on the sidelines of the national legislature's annual session.

This is a testimony to China's "sustained and steady" improvement of coal mine work safety nationwide, with the annual coal production volume in the country surging to 3.87 billion tonnes in 2014 from about 1 billion tonnes in 2002, he told reporters.

Last year also witnessed a decline of 14.3 percent in the coal mine accident deaths from 2013, SAWS figures revealed.

"The nation is still confronted with grave and complicated challenges in coal mine work safety, as the authorities aim to achieve a zero-death target," he stressed.