Law enforcement personnel from the local emergency management authority conduct a safety check 93 meters underground in a mine in Changxing county, Huzhou, Zhejiang province, on Friday. [Photo by Tan Yunfeng/for China Daily]

The Ministry of Emergency Management, together with judicial organs, has strengthened accountability in work safety management through crackdowns on violations, according to a ministry spokesman.

Since its establishment in 2018, the ministry has further improved the legal and regulation systems for work safety governance, Shen Zhanli, the ministry's spokeswoman, said at a news conference on Thursday.

Facilitated by the ministry, the top legislature adopted an amendment to the Work Safety Law last year that ramps up risk control in emerging sectors such as the platform economy and increases punishment for violations, she noted.

She said the ministry also offered close coordination in the 2021 amendment to the Criminal Law, which rules that criminal liability will be triggered when company operations pose an actual threat of heavy casualties or other serious consequences, even if none occur.

Shen vowed close cooperation from the ministry with the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security to guide local authorities to unearth and crack down on work safety violations.

Ye Shaosheng, a senior judge from the Supreme People's Court, said courts across the country have intensified punishment for crimes endangering production safety.

Despite small differences in the annual total of concluded cases involving such crimes, there have been remarkable increases in recent years in both the number of people convicted and those sentenced to more than five years in prison, he noted.

He said that against the backdrop of frequent safety-related accidents in the construction sector, courts across the country have adhered to severe punishment as a general principle in handling cases.

In one of the accidents that made headlines in 2020, the collapse of a restaurant in rural Xiangfen county, Shanxi province left 29 dead and 28 injured. The direct economic loss caused by it reached about 11.6 million yuan ($1.7 million).

Investigators concluded that frequent expansion by unqualified contractors was to blame for the deadly collapse, which happened in August when family members and fellow villagers attended a birthday banquet for an 80-year-old man.

"Accidents in the construction sector directly jeopardize the safety of people's lives and property," Ye stressed.

Ye said that Qi Jianhua, owner and operator of the collapsed restaurant in Shanxi, was given the highest possible penalty of seven years in jail for the crime of causing a major-liability accident.