China’s government has a New Year’s resolution: to stamp out smoking.
Leaders aim to reduce smokers to 25% of the population by 2015, down from 28% in 2010, according to a smoking-cessation plan the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published recently. The work of the ministries of health, finance and foreign affairs, as well as the administrations of tobacco, safety, customs, industry and commerce, it plots moves to ban smoking in public places and end ads and sponsorships by tobacco companies.
China is home to 300 million smokers, a quarter of the world total, and they burn up a third of the world’s cigarettes, according to a study from the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
The stub-smoking initiative comes weeks after World Health Organization officials urged China’s government to reduce smoking rates by at least 30% by 2025 through programs teaching that habits such as tobacco use and excessive salt intake can lead to chronic diseases and early death.
Smoking-related sicknesses kill more than one million Chinese citizens each year, according to the WHO, and smoking contributes to the country’s high rates of chronic disease—which accounts for 80% of deaths and 70% of health expenditure.
Critics of China’s tobacco plan say enforcement details are lacking. A smoking ban in public places such as hotels and restaurants, announced in 2011, has been only loosely applied.
“Apart from the legal codes legislated by various local governments on banning smoking and installing ‘no smoking’ signs in public places, there are hardly any specific rules to enforce the ban,” an editorial in the state-owned China Daily said, adding, “Besides, very few smokers have received due punishment violating the ban.” The editorial also notes that cigarette packages lack graphic health warnings—which in other parts of the world can include gruesome images.
Beijing has said long said it is determined to tackle the country’s smoking problem, but so far has had little success. Cigarettes remain cheap—available for less than $1 for a pack, according to the WHO, which recommended last year that China triple its tobacco tax to 70% to discourage young would-be smokers from buying.
The Brookings study points out that the government’s interests in the tobacco fight are a bit cloudy: The tobacco industry contributes between 7% to 10% of the central government’s total revenue, according to the study—around 600 billion yuan ($96.3 billion) in 2011.
There’s even the stuff of a family squabble in all this, the Brookings study said: Li Keqiang, who will oversee public health when he officially becomes China’s vice premier in March, is the brother of Li Keming—deputy director of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration.