Abstract: In order to draw lessons from history, grasp the law and identify directions, from the perspective of economic and social development, statistical analysis, induction and deduction and other methods were used to systematically tease out the development course of coal mine safety in 120 years since the 20th century is systematically reviewed. The 120-year history is divided into 7 historical periods, 4 historical periods in old-China and 3 historical periods in new-China. This paper established the time shaft concerning coal mine safety development, and analyzed the safety status and characteristics of coal mine in each historical period. In the study, the overall law of coal mine accidents in China was proposed, and the main tasks of coal mine safety production in the new era was proposed on this basis. According to the research results, it showed that coal mine accidents in China are on the trend of “long-term growth before rapid decline” on the whole, and the economic and social development presents significant characteristics of the times. Serious accidents happened frequently when the economic market fluctuates. The optimization of coal production structure and the improvement of the coal mine in technology equipment level are the important factors for the improvement of safety in production.