While China has maintained its rapid economic growth this year, major explosions and other incidents in coal mines have killed at least 1,700 people.

The death of the miners should be among the memorable moments for 2005.

While celebrating the holiday season, the public should not forget these people who toiled in a difficult, dangerous job and in the face of a disaster, fought to survive but ended up dying in darkness, terror and desperation.

After learning that most of the catastrophes were caused by heartless people, our grief quickly turned into rage.

And the frequent occurrence of the shocking cases even made people frustrated because it seemed that the efforts to reduce the incidents did not work well.

In a country with complex geographical conditions, a huge population and a changing society, it is impossible to avoid all the incidents. In fact, death from incidents can happen anywhere in the world. After all, humankind cannot control everything.

But information dug up by investigators on the frequent coal mine incidents revealed that many of them could have been avoided.

Behind the accidents were irresponsible managers and regulators, and greedy owners some of whom are actually corrupt officials. In most of the cases, it was those who were indifferent to life that caused the deaths of our fathers and brothers.

At a time when the nation upholds "people first" as the top principle to guide the future, all those who cherish life should be prepared to fight tooth and nail no matter how difficult it is.

It was heart-warming to hear Premier Wen Jiabao say "we will not be disheartened" by the frequent mine incidents, a problem that had proved very hard to solve.

The State Council last week outlined the measures it planned to take to address some deep-rooted causes of the problems at the mines. It was an encouraging move.

At a press conference yesterday, Li Yizhong, minister of state administration of work safety, suggested that Criminal Law will be revised to mete out harsher punishments to those responsible for coal mine incidents.

It is certain that the fight will continue to be a hard one.

The loss of lives in coal mines has been the top issue of concern for the past couple of years when people took stock at year's end.

At the end of another year, related government departments and all the parties who could help the miners should take action.

The announced measures must be put in place to alleviate the dire situation as soon as possible.

It may sound far-fetched to link the bright festival lights and holiday celebrations to blood-stained coal.

But it is a cold, hard fact that the surging demand generated by rapid economic growth was a critical factor driving the irresponsible coal owners to force their workers to produce coal as much as ten times of the mine's capacity.

We have been singing odes to our development. But we must pause and take drastic actions if lives continue to perish in this way as a price for growth.