China's Inner Mongolia began an overhaul of its mining sector Wednesday, state media said, in an effort to quell ethnic Mongol anger over charges of resource exploitation and environmental damage.

The northern Chinese region launched a push to bring order to the rapid exploitation of its rich coal deposits, Xinhua news agency said, after accelerating mining activity helped spark Mongol protests.

The one-month campaign is aimed at "ensuring the healthy, orderly, harmonious and green development of the coal industry" in Inner Mongolia, the region's coal mining bureau said in a notice dated Tuesday on its website.

The vast region has seen a wave of demonstrations since last week, sparked by the May 10 killing of an ethnic Mongol protester who had tried to block a coal truck driven by a member of China's dominant Han ethnicity.

The incident led to protests across the region of vast rolling plains and deserts, which separates the rest of China from the Republic of Mongolia to the north and has traditionally been home to nomadic Mongol herders.

China moved swiftly to tighten security, including sealing off some restive college campuses, and residents in protest-hit areas have reported a tense calm had returned.

However, hundreds of Mongols marched again in the regional capital Hohhot on Tuesday, the US-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center said, quoting sources in the city, about a one-hour flight west of Beijing.

The centre had said a protest march also took place on Monday. AFP could not independently verify the group's reports.

The coal industry crackdown would include stepped-up checks on all existing and future projects and require all proposed mines to first submit environmental impact statements, the Inner Mongolia coal bureau's notice said.

"During the design review period, there must be environmental impact statements, water and soil conservation programmes, and the approval of relevant ecological management departments," it said.

Operators that fail to ensure orderly and environmentally sound mining activities will receive "heavy" punishment, it added.

Xinhua said a similar mining overhaul launched May 20 in the Xilingol area where the unrest began had seen four companies shut down and 34 more suspended over "environmental damage, harassment of local residents and safety issues."

China's desperate need for natural resources to fuel its economic growth has emerged as a growing source of anger in resource-rich regions populated by ethnic minorities already chafing at rule by a Communist Party government that brooks no dissent.

Tibetans have complained of Chinese mining practices in the remote Himalayan region, while many members of the Muslim ethnic Uighur minority of Xinjiang in northwestern China say exploitation of its energy resources has benefited only Han.

The two regions exploded in deadly anti-Han violence in 2008 and 2009 respectively, and remain under tight security.

Inner Mongolia, whose natives have linguistic and cultural links with their cousins in independent Mongolia, has been comparatively calm.

But there is simmering Mongol anger over concerns that Chinese culture is swamping their way of life.

In particular, a Chinese government policy to move traditional Mongol herders off the steppe to preserve the grassland ecology is widely considered a pretext to seize lands holding coal and other minerals.

Inner Mongolia is rich in coal, source of about 70 percent of China's power, and other key minerals.

China has issued a series of promises to heed Mongol concerns, and the regional government said Wednesday grassland herders would receive subsidies to help spur their livestock production.

Meanwhile, Xinhua reported four people arrested in the death of the Mongol protester -- a herder -- have been charged and would face a public trial in Xilingol.

But Beijing also has moved to squash further unrest.

The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders said Chinese authorities were "suspending or slowing" Internet and phone services in the region, apparently to thwart organisers of any future demonstrations.

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