Dilemma of the habit that’s hard to break
Print Edition
CHINA’S smokers are paying about 10 percent more for their habit after China’s Ministry of Finance raised the wholesale tobacco tax earlier this month.
The move was part of national efforts to discourage smoking in a country where more than 300 million people consume more than a third of the world’s annual cigarette production.
But in the tobacco-producing heartland of China smoking is commonplace at work, in taxis and even in hospitals.
Snatching a break, construction worker Yao Xinggang takes deep puffs on a cigarette through a traditional-style water pipe.
He smokes two packets a day, but insists: “It’s less harmful to health because the smoke is filtered through the water in the pipe.”
Cheap cigarettes are a mainstay of daily life in the southwestern province of Yunnan.
“A lot of people smoke here. It’s all because of the local economy. Many tobacco companies are set up here in Yunnan,” said Zhang Jie, as he lit up on the doorstep of his office in Baoshan.
“It’s good for the economy,” he said of the tobacco industry. “It helps to boost farmers’ incomes.”
Among men, 52.9 percent smoke according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization, among the highest rates in the world. It is almost entirely a male habit, with little over 2 percent of women joining them.
The Chinese government makes billions from the industry: 911 billion yuan (US$146 billion) in taxes and profits in 2014, an increase of 12 percent year on year.
China National Tobacco Corporation, the state-owned firm that has a near-monopoly on the market, is by far the world’s largest cigarette company, producing three times as many as its nearest rival Philip Morris in the United States. It had a turnover of US$170 billion in 2012 — more than tech giant Apple.
Raising prices reduces consumption
But at the same time more than a million people a year die from tobacco-related illnesses in China‚ roughly two a minute and a heavy social burden in a country with an ageing population and shrinking workforce.
Curbing the habit has become a burning question for the Chinese government.
Raising cigarette prices has been proven to be the most reliable method to reduce consumption, and it is a cornerstone of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
This recommends that at least 70 percent of the retail price of a cigarette is made up of taxes.
According to the WHO, when Russia imposed many of its recommendations in 2013, its number of smokers fell by 17 percent in the following year.
But on current trends China will fall short of meeting its global goal to reduce smoking prevalence by 30 percent by 2025, it says.
China ratified the WHO convention in 2005, but many officials say they are concerned about the disproportionate impact on the poor, who spend a higher share of their income on tobacco.
Experts point to the financial and health benefits a decline in smoking would bring.
According to a study in The Lancet medical journal last month, a 50 percent increase in the price of tobacco in China would result in an additional 231 million life-years in the following five decades.
China recently banned tobacco advertising in mass media, in public places, public vehicles and outdoors, from September.
Lack of awareness remains a deep-rooted issue in China.
Zhou Fuzhong, a retired prosecutor from Baoshan, said he is aware of tobacco’s harmful effects, and he forbids his children from smoking.
But he added: “Of all the people that I know and in my family, no one has ever fallen sick because of tobacco.”
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