SMOKING IN CHINA
China is the world's largest tobacco producer and tobacco consumer. It is home to one quarter of the world’s smokers and they consume a third of the world’s cigarettes.
In China there are 350 million smokers, about three times the number of smokers in the United States, or more than the entire population of the United States. Chinese smokers smoke an average of 15.8 cigarettes a day, which works out to more than 2 trillion cigarettes a year. Smoking kills 1.2 million Chinese a year. Even so 50 percent of Chinese doctors smoke.
Smoking is very much part of Chinese culture. Many Chinese like to smoke not only after a meal but during a meal. Expensive cigarette brands like Panda and Zhonghua are commonly given as presents to bosses and parents and are offered as a welcoming gesture to house guests. Some brands link themselves to good causes. A message on packs of Zhongnanhai brand cigarettes reads: “For each pack you consume, you are devoting your part to the charity Hope Project.”
On a per capita basis smoking is lower than other places in teh developed world. Per capita cigarette consumption in China is 1,791 cigarette per year, compared to 2,350 in the United States, 2770 in Japan, and 2,058 in France. Average cigarette consumption per person per year in China rose from 739 in 1970 to 1,290 in 1980 to 1,900 in 1990.
History of Tobacco in China
1918 cigarette ad
A 1638 Imperial edict in China declared that the possession, use or selling of tobacco was a capital offense punishable by decapitation.
After the invention of the cigarette rolling machine in 1881, the founder of the British-American Tobacco Co. (BAT), James B. Duke, reportedly asked one his employees to bring him an atlas. After examining a page on population figures he reportedly pointed to China and said, "This is where we are going to sell cigarettes."
Both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping were heavy smokers. Mao reported liked foreign 555 cigarettes but also smoked Chinese-made Zhounghua. He brought in hand rollers from Yunnan to work in a special workshop near the Communist Party headquarters. Big Double Nine was Chiang Kai-shek’s favorite cigarette. Zhou Enlai smoked Zhadan..
Deng favored special Chinese-produced Panda cigarettes made from the tips of tobacco leaves that now sell for up to $100 a pack. On No Tobacco Day in 1988 Deng was given a note on the National People's Congress that read, "Please do not smoke in the Presidium." Deng reportedly went along the request and the incident was widely reported.
Chinese Smokers
In China, 70 percent (63 percent, 60 percent 57 percent, depending on the source) of men smoke while only 7 percent (or 3 percent depending on the source) of women smoke. The number of women and children who smoke is rising all the time. Smoking is becoming increasingly popular among young, urban women. An average man smokes 20 cigarettes a day.
Half of health care workers and doctors smoke, including the former health minister Gao Qiang, who used to smoke at meetings.
Chinese smokers are more likely defend their habit—saying it reduces stress, wards of mosquitos and prevent colds—than admit to its health hazards. One smoker told the Los Angeles Times, “Every man I know smokes—it’s just the custom. It’s not a matter of whether it is good or bad, it’s just kind of a fact. It’s part of life here.”
Around three million Chinese begin smoking each year, most when they are in their teens. According to a survey in the People's Daily, 16 percent of elementary and high school pupils said they were regular smokers and 33 percent had tried smoking. In some places 60 percent of high school boys and 22 percent of girls smoke.
The average age in which boys take their first drag has dropped from 15 in the 1990s to 11 in the 2000s. More and more girls are taking up smoking all the time. One 14-year-old girl, who smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, told the Washington Post, "We're chimneys. We love it. It's cool. It helps me study. And in the summer, it keeps mosquitos away." The girl said she had no trouble buying cigarettes. "Shop keepers don't really care," she said. "They will sell to anyone." Once they are hooked very few Chinese smokers quit.
Smoking Culture in China
Smoking has become part of the culture in China. Offering cigarettes is an easy way to make a friend, solidify a bond or ease an introduction. Cigarettes are given as wedding gifts, presented to guests along with snacks at parties and left as offerings on the graves of men who have died of lung cancer. Many characters on television and film are heavy smokers.
Cigarettes are handed out at funerals. Setting a lit cigarette next to a grave is said to pacify the craving of the deceased. Drivers pulled over for driving violations often hand the police a cigarette before they show their license. Passing out Double Happiness cigarettes at weddings is supposed increase a bride’s fertility.
Smoking is a sign of machismo, a way to greet old friends and make new friends and a method of bribing officials. One reason that half of Chinese doctors smoke is that relatives of patients often give cigarettes as a thank you gift. One Chinese researcher told the Los Angeles Times. “And if senior doctors smoke, junior doctors follow suit. If you’re offered a cigarette and decline, you’re still seen as rude, We need to change this custom.”
Chinese smoke on elevators and in hospitals Restaurants are filled with smokers. One saying goes: “A smoke after dinner is better than life after death.” Smoking between dishes during meals is a common practice. Some Chinese smoke and eat at the same time with chopsticks in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Many Chinese like to shout and blow smoke, while they are spitting.
Many smokers say that a morning smoke energizes them. Urban women smokers say that smoking helps keep them focused and fosters creativity.
Smoking and Doing Business
Deals are often sealed with a handshake and a gift of a carton of cigarettes. Non-smokers often accept cigarettes but later throw them away. Declining a cigarette can be taken as an insult and causes the cigarette giver to lose face. A researcher at the China Tobacco Museum in Shanghai told the New York Times, “Cigarettes have an extra value that helps improve many social interactions.”
Peter Hessler wrote in The New Yorker, “For entrepreneurs, the give-and take of cigarettes represents a kind of semaphore.” Each brand has “a distinct identity and an unspoken exchange rate. Around Beijing, peasants smoke Red Plum Blossoms. Red Pagoda Mountain can be found in the pockets of average city men. Low level entrepreneurs like Zhongnanhai Lights. A nouveau-rich businessman tosses out Chunghwas as if they were rice. Pandas are the rarest and best of all...government quotas make them hard to find.”
A local village leader told Hessler, “I had a pack of Chunghwas that had been given to me by a customer. One man at the table had Red Pagoda Mountain, and another had State Express 555. But I was the one with the most expensive brand. They were all important people, each one had some possible use of me. I’m thinking about installing a water heater for my guesthouse, and there’s a government program that pays for that in the countryside. One of the men deals with that program. So it might be possible for me to install it for free.”
Chinese Cigarettes
Over 400 brands of cigarettes are sold at China’s ubiquitous tobacco shops.Popular Chinese brands include Happy New Year, Gold Medal, Red Pagoda Mountain (good but more expensive than Western cigarettes), Zhonghua, Red Double Happiness, Yellow Mountain, Temple of Heaven, and Weige (the Chinese name for Viagra). Chinese cigarettes are among the cheapest in the world. Cheap brands such as Bandling sells for about 10 to 20 cents a pack. Big Harvest, Little Panda and Yellow Pagoda cost less than 50 cents a pack. More expensive brands such as Red Pagoda cost around one dollar. Gold-filtered Chunghua cigarettes sell for $10 a pack. The East is Red cigarettes advertisements promise prosperity to people who smoke them.
Foreign brands hold less than 5 percent of the Chinese market. Popular foreign brand include 555 made by British America Tobacco and Mild Seven made Japan Tobacco. Marlboro, Lucky Strike, Dunhill and Benson and Hedges are the most sought after foreign brands. Western cigarettes are status symbols and not surprisingly counterfeiting them is a lucrative business.
Chinese cigarettes tend to be very harsh. One Chinese man told Reuters, "I have been smoking 555 for seven years because I like the taste and I have less phlegm than when I smoke Chinese brands.”
Panda cigarettes—with pandas on the box—are highly valued. Both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping smoked them. They are a popular gift item and a popular item to give corrupt officials to secure a contract or get a job. People are willing to pay $10 for a pack and sometimes wait overnight outside government stores to get them. Special edition releases of the cigarette sell for $50 a pack. One advertising campaign called them “the most exclusive cigarette in the world.”
China’s largest cigarette maker, Yunnan Hongta Group, is known for its roasted homegrown tobacco and special blends. A representative with the company told Reuters, “Our roasted cigarettes have fewer additives. The way we make cigarettes is like brewing clay-pot chicken. We try to retain the original flavor, though we would still need to add some seasoning like salt, MSG and ginger.”
Tobacco-Related Illnesses and Accidents
One in every eight male deaths in China is caused by smoking-related illnesses. This figure is expected to rise to 1 in 3 by 2050. The estimated number of deaths from smoking-related causes rose from 500,000 in 1996 to 700,000 in 2002 to around 1.2 million in 2009 and is expected to rise to 2 million in 2025. If Chinese continue smoking at the rate they do more than 3 million people a year will die of tobacco-related illnesses. Smoking costs $6 billion a year in health care costs.
Chinese smokers are three times more likely to get lung cancer than nonsmokers and twice as likely to get tuberculosis. A quarter of all deaths in China are caused by respiratory illnesses. It is impossible to say how many are caused by smoking and how many are caused by air pollution or something else. Second hand smoke is big health hazard in China.
A government survey of 3,600 doctors in 2004 found that 30 percent of them did not known smoking was linked to heart disease. Health ministers smoke at meetings.
When presented with scientific data studies of the dangers of smoking many Chinese respond by citing the fact that chain-smoking Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong lived to be 92 and 82 receptively. On the issue of second smoke and children, one mother told the New York Times, “If you overprotect your children, they don’t get their immunity. Breathing a little smoke when they are small makes them stronger.”
Smoking-related diseases and fires are believed to cost China $7.8 billion a year. Many fires in China are started by careless smokers. Carpets, furniture and bed sheets in Chinese hotel rooms often have a number of cigarette burns on them.
In 1995, a teenager in Tianjin in northeast China smoked 100 Peony-brand cigarettes in one sitting in an effort to win a bet and then died from a "heart attack brought on by excessive intake of cigarette smoke and acute nicotine poisoning." The 19-year-old youth, a construction worker named Wu, bet a friend that whoever quit smoking first would have to pay for all the cigarettes. The friend quit after 40 cigarettes but Wu continued smoking five cigarettes at a time by taping them together so he could reach the 100 mark.
540 million people exposed to harmful secondhand smoke.
Anti-Smoking Campaigns in China
Smoking is banned in public places like schools, railway stations and government buildings. But enforcement is spotty. In is not uncommon to see men smoking below non-smoking signs in the cancer wards of hospitals. The government said it out 100,000 inspectors to enforce the ban but the $1.40 fine offers little deterrence.
Tobacco advertising is banned on television and radio and cigarette packs are required to carry health warnings but the warning on cigarettes packs are small and not very explicit. One anti-cigarette activist tried to convince Communist leaders that restricting tobacco advertising served their interest by protecting the Chinese tobacco monopoly and shielding young people from foreign cigarette advertising.
Anti-Smoking education is also minimal. According to one survey, 40 percent of the Chinese asked do not know that lung cancer could be caused by smoking. Even fewer knew that heart disease could also be caused by smoking. China's largest anti-smoking organization has about a dozen employees and an annual budget of $61,000, of which only a share comes from the government. Among those who endorse cigarettes brands are Olympic golden-medal-winning hurdler Liu Xian, who plugs cigarettes made by the Baishan tobacco company.
Smoking is no longer permitted in the Great Hall of the People. In September 2005, China decided to ban tobacco advertising and vending machine within five years. The ban affects the mainland, Hong Kong and Macau. In February 2006, the Chinese government announced a ban on the construction of cigarette factories.
Laws preventing the sale of tobacco products to minors were only put on the books in 2007 and even these laws failed to spell out punishments or say how they would be enforced. There was debate in the late 2000s as to whether or not graphic warnings with images diseased organs and disfigured cancer patients, like those used in Canada, should be placed on cigarette packages. Lawyers have also begun to file suits against tobacco companies for failing to disclose the harm caused by cigarettes. So far courts have refused to hear the cases.
Chinese cigarettes have no warning labels although that is scheduled to change in 2011. In May 2009, China announced it would ban smoking in all hospitals and medical facilities from 2011. Ban put in place in May 2008 prohibits athletes for accepting tobacco company sponsorships.
Smoking was a target of the etiquette campaign in Beijing during the run up to the Olympics. Beginning in May 2008, smoking was banned in all government offices and on public transport, with violators facing a punishment of up to $700. Smoking continued to be allowed in restaurants, bars and clubs but these places had to provide smoke-free areas. Hotels had to offer smoke-free rooms. Smoking was already banned in cinemas, sports arenas, airports and railway station. It was banned in taxis in October 2007.
Resistance to No Smoking
A plan in Beijing to ban smoking in bars, restaurant, karaoke lounges and massage parlors was proposed but quickly died. Laws that encourage eating and drinking establishments to set aside nonsmoking areas have been ignored.
In January 2008, it was reported that Beijing’s first smoke-free restaurant chain may go out of business because is customers have deserted en mass (as high as 80 percent at some restaurants) after the ban was put in place in October 2007.
One Beijing cab driver old the New York Times, “If I point to the no-smoking sign, the passengers will just laugh and keep smoking.” A Beijing restaurant owner told the New York Times, “My customers would rather starve than not smoke, and I would go out of business. In China, you cannot drink, eat and socialize without a cigarette.”
Increasingly though nonsmokers are complaining about smokers smoking in non-smoking areas—often affecting a cough and waving away the smoke in their face—and smokers are putting out their cigarettes and apologizing.
Smokeless Cigarettes
Some Chinese smoke tobacco-free, electric pipes (e-pipes) that have an LED ember that glows orange with each puff and a device that produces pseudo-smoke made from water vapor and uses ultrasound to atomize liquid nicotine into inhalable droplets.
Hon Li, a university professor who once smoked three packs of cigarettes a day, invented a smokeless electronic cigarettes that deliver nicotine with a smoke free vaper. Named the Riuya, meaning “smoke,” the device contains a small lithium battery that atomizes a liquid solution of nicotine that produces vapor that looks like smoke and is inhaled by the user. Reusable e-cigarettes sell for around $150. Replacement cartridges worth the equivalent of five packs sell $9.
Hon told the Los Angeles Times, the Riuya is a much cleaner, safer way to inhale nicotine.” A distributor of similar devices said, “It’s safe smoking—like smoking with a condom on.” In 2009, disposable e-cigarettes called Jazz began selling in Texas for $25 for the equivalent of five packages. There are still some safety issues with the devices that have to be worked out: namely is it possible to take in too much nicotine and OD from it?
Tobacco Industry, Chinese Government and Taxes
The Chinese National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC) is the world's largest tobacco company. A state monopoly, it employs 520,000 workers, produces 500 brands and has 183 factories, 150 tobacco drying plants, and 30 research institutes. A total of ten million people (tobacco company workers, farmers and shop owners) make a living in China's mostly-state-run tobacco industry.
The cigarette market in China is valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars. It generated $263 billion in pretax profit in the first half of 2007. To keep the profit margins high and foreign competition out, China has imposed import quotas, high tariffs and other trade barriers on foreign cigarettes. A side effect of this policy has been the creation of a massive tobacco smuggling market.
Tobacco and cigarette taxes and profits made by China’s tobacco monopoly provide the central government in Beijing with about 10 percent of its revenues. Money from tobacco is the single largest source of revenue for the Chinese government. Some provinces are almost totally dependant on money generated from tobacco to keep their governments running. Yunnan province, for example, receives about 70 percent of its revenues from tobacco.
tobacco taxes earned the government $39 billion in 2006, 8 percent of all revenues. The vice director of China’s State Tobacco Monopoly Administration has warned “without cigarettes the country’s stability will be affected.”
In 2006, a fifth of China’s top 500 tax payers were tobacco-related companies. Some years more than 80 percent of the profits made from cigarette sales go to the government in taxes. The government's dependence on tobacco revenues is seen as one reason it has failed to mount an extensive anti-smoking campaign.
Tobacco Farming in China
See Agriculture
Foreign Tobacco Companies in China
According to government figures, imported brands account for 4 percent of cigarettes sales. The true figure is believed to be considerably higher because so many foreign cigarettes are smuggled into the country
To make up for loses at home, American cigarette manufacturers have moved aggressively into markets overseas. The Chinese market is particular attractive because it is so large. After China was admitted to the World Trade Organization, the tariffs on foreign tobacco were slashed from 40 percent to 10 percent and the tariffs on foreign cigarettes were reduced from 36 percent to 25 percent
In hopes of expanding production with Western technology, CNTC has set up more 10 joint ventures with foreign companies such as BAT, R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris. The huge RJR-CNTC factory in Xiamen, which opened in 1988, produces 2.5 million Camels, Winstons and Golden Bridges (a popular Chinese brand) a day. The Philip Morris-CNTC joint venture produce cigarettes in Shanghai, Ningbo and Tianjin.
British American Tobacco makes cigarettes in Sichuan. Japan Tobacco has been producing cigarettes in China since 2000. In September 2004, Philip Morris received permission to start making Marlboros in China. They will be made with a joint venture with the state-run Longyan Cigarette factory in Fujian.
Foreign Tobacco Company Advertising in China
Philip Morris, BAT and RJ Reynolds all reportedly spend around $20 million annually for cigarette advertising. Although cigarette advertising has been prohibited since 1984 in China, foreign companies get around the rules by prominently displaying their logos and brand names without showing cigarettes or people smoking.
Foreign tobacco companies have been accused of directing their marketing strategy towards women and young people. They sponsor the Marlboro Soccer League, Kent billiards contests, the Beijing Salem tennis tournament, the 555 Hong Kong-Beijing car race and the immensely popular Marlboro Music Hour on radio. Tickets for the 555 car race with the 555 logo were given out free to Beijing elementary school students.
BAT has sponsors 555 nights at a popular Beijing disco with girls in miniskirts, boots and the 555 logo greeting people at the door and giving them free cigarettes. Over the dance floor is huge 555 banner that reads: "Be free from worldly cares."
Tobacco Smuggling and Counterfeiting in China
Most of the foreign cigarettes sold in China are thought to be counterfeit or to have been smuggled in. Tobacco smuggling into China is a multi-million dollar business--maybe a multi-billion dollar business--controlled largely by gangsters from Hong Kong triads who bribe custom officials and allegedly work with large Hong shipping companies and officials with the British-American Tobacco Company.
Smuggled foreign cigarettes cost much less than legally imported foreign cigarettes. It is estimated that Beijing loses $1 billion a year in tax revenues (more that 10 percent of total revenues) to the black market. Smuggling and counterfeiting cigarettes are so lucrative businesses that some criminal gangs have stitched their focus from heroin to cigarettes.
Cigarette counterfeiting is common. Rough cut tobacco usually discarded by cigarette makers is used to make the cigarettes. Often it contains floor sweepings, sawdust and a variety of chemicals. Much of the counterfeiting effort goes into making cigarette boxes that look just like the real thing down to the English warning labels. Many of the counterfeit cigarette factories are in the rural areas of Fujian and Guangdong provinces. Some have been built underground to avoid detection.
Cigarette counterfeiting is a problem outside of China. Marlboros and other well known brand that are copied in China are sold abroad. Billions of counterfeit cigarettes make their way in to Britain alone. By one count a third of the cigarettes smoked in Britain are counterfeit with 80 percent of them made in China.
The bootleg cigarettes are often more dangerous than regular cigarettes. They often contain dangerous levels of arsenic and lead and other poisons. One study found that counterfeit cigarettes contain six times the levels of lead as regular cigarettes and 160 percent more tar.
Image Sources: University of Washington; Environmental News
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
© 2008 Jeffrey Hays