SHENYANG, Oct. 9 -- China has started renovating the memorial site of a mass grave for Chinese miners forced into labor by Japanese troops about seven decades ago after media reports revealed the relics' deplorable condition.

Beginning earlier this month, conservators began renovating long-neglected memorial halls and a damaged monument built in 1968 at the ruins of the burial ground in Fuxin City, northeast China's Liaoning Province, according to a spokesman with the government of Fuxin.

The large-scale facelift, funded by the central and local governments, is expected to be completed next year, said the spokesman.

Skeletons of tens of thousands of Chinese miners are thought to be interred at the 560,000-square-meter site. The mass grave has been poorly maintained due to a lack of funds, though it was put under state protection in 2006.

Media reports in late September show the surface of the monument was peeling off and miners' remains were scattered around without proper protection. The spokesman said a project aimed at better preserving the remains will be launched soon.

During the Japanese occupation in the 1930s and 1940s, the troops coerced Chinese people into mining in coal-rich parts of the country. Many miners were killed in accidents due to absence of protective measures or from intense labor.

The Fuxin site, the largest preserving Japanese invaders' atrocities to Chinese miners, was among a list of 80 state facilities and sites commemorating the Anti-Japanese War released by the State Council in early September. The country marked its first Martyrs' Day on Sept. 30.