Widespread closures and mergers will leave fewer than 20 firms, including six to eight new "super coal production enterprises' with a yield of 100 million tonnes each, accounting for more than 50 percent of the country's entire output by 2010, Xinhua news agency said.

China reported a total coal output of more than 2.3 billion tonnes of coal last year.

Small mines that are illegal or inefficient and have given the industry its appalling safety record are already being weeded out, Wang Xianzheng, deputy director of the State Administration of Work Safety, was quoted as saying.

Over the last two years, more than 9,000 small mines have been shut and another 1,000 will close by the end of 2007, Xinhua said.

As part of the streamlining process the country plans to build 10 large strip-mines with a production capacity of 10 million tonnes each and another 10 pits with a yield of 10 million tonnes each, Wang said.

China's coal mines are among the most dangerous in the world, and many of the accidents occur in small, unlicensed mines where safety regulations are widely ignored.

More than 4,700 coal miners died in China last year, according to official figures, but independent labour groups put the real toll at closer to 20,000 annually. They say many accidents never come to light.

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