The first stage in treating any addiction is admitting you have a problem. China, home to almost a third of the world’s male smokers, appears to have done so. Beijing’s 12th five-year plan, adopted in March, contained for the first time a commitment to ban lighting up in public places. Last week hotels, bars, bus terminals and other enclosed spaces officially went smoke-free.
Of course, it will take more than a few “no smoking” signs to change behaviour in a nation where giving cartons of high-class cigarettes is a gesture of goodwill, where tobacco companies sponsor elementary schools, and where half of all smokers spend Rmb5 ($0.77) or less on a pack of 20.
The state itself is hopelessly conflicted. The combination of taxes on sales and profits from China National Tobacco Corporation, the wholly state-owned monopoly, accounts for about 9 per cent of annual fiscal revenues. The Ministry of Health, moreover, is just one of eight agencies charged with implementing the World Health Organisation’s conventions on tobacco control. The group is chaired by the powerful Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which oversees the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration. That may explain why warnings on packs – the responsibility of the STMA – are small, text-only and non-specific: “smoking is harmful to your health.”