The move is designed to make it prohibitively expensive for employers, particularly in the fatality-plagued mining and construction industries, to leave dangerous working conditions unremedied.

It would also encourage them to take out accident insurance on their staff, said Jing Bao, an official publication, quoting Cao Zongli, an official with the regulation department of the State Administration of Work Safety.

Though new regulations designed to foster workplace safety were introduced a year ago, many industries that depend on low-paid migrant workers still refuse to buy employee accident coverage.

On Monday, a fatal gas explosion killed 210 coal miners in Fuxin, Liaoning province. Their employer was said to have forced miners to sign a contract specifying maximum compensation of 20,000 yuan (HK$18,860) in the event of a fatal accident at work.

Cao said the central government wants provincial legislative bodies to impose the new compensation standard and ensure its enforcement.

Last October, the government of Shanxi - China's biggest coal producing province - issued its own compensation policy, stipulating a payment of at least 200,000 yuan to the families of miners killed on the job.

However, Ong Yew-kim, a mainland law specialist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said it was a bad idea for the authorities to issue an administrative policy on worker compensation.

``The government should not use administrative policy to interfere with on-the-job accident compensation, which should be dealt with by insurance companies,'' Ong said.

The new compensation standard would result in a big increase in insurance premiums for enterprises on the mainland, according to Mr Lau, a manager at a Hong Kong-owned company in Shenzhen.

Lau said his company had bought insurance coverage for all its workers, though he declined to say how high the payouts went. pamela.pun@globalchina.com