Or are these five year survival figures? I don't know what it means.
To me it should mean that looking at the causes of all deaths these cancers are dropping by these percentages but that means that something else is taking up the slack.
“I do not understand the significance of these numbers.”
The figures are age-specific death rates per 100,000 in a given year, which obviously never equal 100% (except maybe for 120-year-olds). You’re right that in principle, cancer rates could be declining as rates from another cause of death rise, but that’s not typically how this works. That is, if the cancer death rate for 50-59 year old males declines, it typically means that the “survivors” (whether these be people actually cured of cancer or people who averted cancer in the first place through early detection or prevention) live added years. Yes, they may eventually die of something else, but the fact that they didn’t die of cancer does mean they gained extra years of life. So even though everyone faces a 100% chance of death eventually, the issue is how many years they live before dying. Eliminating or reducing a cause of death from a particular cause invariably increases life expectancy, even if only a small amount.