BEIJING // Weaning more than 300 million smokers off their potentially deadly habit is no easy task, but today China begins what campaigners hope could be the country's most significant move yet against tobacco.
A ban on smoking in indoor public spaces is due to take effect, although many believe the world's most populous nation is paying lip service to its international obligations rather than launching a genuine crackdown, despite the human cost of smoking in China.
An estimated one million people die from smoking each year in China, a figure predicted to triple by 2030. Yet, with tobacco revenues and taxes contributing billions of dollars to government coffers each year, activists have long felt Beijing is reluctant to take serious measures.
Firstly, the ban being brought in tomorrow was to have been introduced in January according to China's obligations to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, initiated by the World Health Organisation.
Also, current restrictions, which bans smoking in train carriages for example, are not always well enforced, not least because smoking is a deeply ingrained habit, especially among men.
Smoking is seen as a macho habit in China, to the extent that 57 per cent of adult males light up, compared to just three per cent of women.
Even poor rural and migrant workers can afford to smoke because the cheapest of China's more than 800 cigarette brands cost as little as three yuan (Dh1.7) per packet, with costs having fallen three-quarters relative to wages between 1996 and 2006.
It is no surprise then that smokers in China get through 2.3 trillion cigarettes a year, four times the figure of three decades ago.
The former leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xioaping both often lit up in public and, perhaps hindering efforts to portray smoking as a health hazard, both lived to an advanced age.
Although the proportion of men who smoke is even higher in some other Asian countries than it is in China, for example Vietnam, where the figure is 70 per cent, in other parts of the region male smoking rates have fallen dramatically. In Hong Kong, just 11.8 per cent of people smoke.
Low taxes on cigarettes, the lack of graphic pictorial warnings on packets and, until now, the absence of a public ban are blamed for China's continuing high level of smoking.
While saying the introduction of the ban was "welcome" and a "significant" move on China's part, Amanda Sandford, research manager for the UK-based antismoking organisation Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) said it would be more effective if it was comprehensive. While smoking will officially be banned on public transport and in bars and restaurants, offices and factories are believed to be exempt.
"If you introduce a partial ban, there's going to be a significant group of the population not protected, and it makes it more difficult to enforce," she said.
"Some places are smoke-free and others are not. There's more confusion and more grey areas."
The burden that smoking imposes on China is "already huge" and is "going to be on an incredible scale in years to come", Ms Sandford added.
"There would be a significant number of cases of cancer, heart disease and bronchitis, even if current smokers cut down," she said.
The factor thought to be behind China's apparent reluctance to get serious with smoking is the vast revenues and taxes the state-controlled industry generates for the government, with previous estimates putting the figure as high as 7.6 per cent of government revenues.
Also, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration is responsible both for controlling the industry and the state-owned enterprise the China National Tobacco Corporation, which produces more cigarettes than any other company in the world, and for introducing anti-tobacco measures, creating what is widely seen as a conflict of interest.
