BEIJING - China announced on Thursday it's requiring the nation's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to implement stricter work safety standards over the next five years in order to reduce casualties resulting from accidents.

Huang Shuhe, vice director of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), China's SOE watchdog, said SOEs should improve their work safety regulations and significantly reduce major work safety accidents and casualties from the past five years.

Data showed a total of 157 major work safety accidents occurred among SOEs during the past five years, which caused 965 deaths. These accidents were mainly concentrated in the construction, coal mining and petrochemicals sectors.

According to official statistics, SOEs spent an average of 40 billion yuan ($6.15 billion) each year on work safety during the nation's 11th Five-Year Plan period (2006-2010), but work safety accidents remained frequent in some sectors.

This reveals that some SOEs still needed to strengthen work safety management and need to effectively abide by work safety laws and regulations in the coming five years, Huang said at a national work conference in Beijing.