Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING, May 31 2007 (IPS) – Chinese leaders have promised to make the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing non-smoking ambitious for this country of 360 million smokers. Never have the Games that celebrate physical fitness been held in a country more hooked on tobacco and more afflicted by smoking-related diseases.
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China s smoking population, as in so many other global rankings, is the world s biggest. Nearly 60 percent men in the country smoke and proffering cigarettes is a ritualised form of social courtesy. But the health toll from the smoking addiction is also very high an estimated 1.2 million Chinese die every year from tobacco-related illnesses.
It is the cheapest way to let off steam, says Yang Dong, a nervous Beijing taxi driver who cannot resist lighting up when the traffic lights take too long to change. He shrugs when asked about the risks to his health: There is not much to do when you are stuck in a traffic jam, and these days it happens a lot.
He is clueless about the risks of second-hand smoke. And he is not the only one. Health experts say only 35 percent of the people surveyed for a new, national tobacco-control report were aware of the dangers of passive smoking.
The report, released by the ministry of health this week, has for the first time publicised its hazards, calling second-hand smoke a killer at large . It says about 100,000 Chinese die every year from it, while more than half-a-billion suffer from the smoke exhaled from cigarettes.
More public education is needed to get the anti-smoking message across, according to Henk Bekedam, the World Health Organisation representative in China. We do not yet have enough change in behaviour as a society. We need to do an awful lot more in order to get there, he said.
But if the capital city authorities have their way, scenes of chain-smoking taxi drivers would be nowhere to be seen next summer when Beijing plays host to the Olympics.
By promising to host smoking-free Olympics next year, Chinese leaders seek to project the right image that of a modern and progressive force. But they also hope that the example of smoke-free Olympics might be just that external factor needed to boost the efforts of a nascent anti-tobacco movement in China.
A smoke-free China campaign was officially launched here in April. The programme is part of the 125 million US dollar Bloomberg Initiative, which uses funds donated by Michael Bloomberg, New York s billionaire mayor, to curb tobacco use in 15 developing countries. With help from China s Centre for Disease Control and other groups, the programme will be initially rolled out in 20 Chinese provinces, and will last through the end of 2008.
Attempts to curb smoking in China, which is the world s biggest tobacco producer, involve a difficult choice for the country s leadership. That is because the state owns the national tobacco monopoly that makes some 97 percent of the cigarettes sold in the country.
State-controlled China National Tobacco Corp. is the world s biggest tobacco producer which churned out more than two trillion cigarettes last year, accounting for about 30 percent of production. In 2005 it paid 31 billion dollars in taxes and profits to the central government, amounting to 7.5 percent of revenue received by the finance ministry that year.
Tax bounty aside, in many poor regions like Guizhou and Yunnan in the country s southwest, the tobacco industry is regarded also as a pillar of economic development, providing employment and funding for localities.
The stakes in the industry are so high that Beijing has fought hard to protect its producers and the state monopoly from the onslaught of foreign tobacco giants. As part of its deal to join the World Trade Organisation, China agreed to lower tariffs on imported cigarettes to 25 percent from 65 percent. Foreign companies however, are still not allowed to make cigarettes in China.
Yet even as it battles to preserve its financial interests, Beijing is becoming more aware of the spiralling healthcare costs and the overall economic price through lost productivity the country will pay unless tobacco use is controlled.
A study conducted by a Beijing University research centre toted up the overall financial cost of smoking at 31 billion dollars in 2005, including medical treatment bills, a shorter lifespan, lost work days and fires started by errant cigarette butts. What is more, the current annual death toll is expected to nearly double, to 2.2 million people by 2020.
One sign that China is beginning to confront its cigarette habit emerged when the central government signed a landmark global treaty to curb tobacco usage. Beijing ratified the U.N. Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2005 and began its implementation in 2006.
The treaty obliges the signatory nations to add clear and strong health warnings on cigarette packages, ban tobacco advertising, increase the price of cigarettes and create smoke-free buildings and workplaces within three to five years of implementing the convention.
The challenges though are tremendous. When delegates to the annual meeting of the Chinese People s Political Consultative Conference, China s advisory body, submitted in March proposals for smoking bans in public places and an increase in tobacco taxes, they were met with stiff resistance.
Zhang Baozhen, a top bureaucrat at the State Tobacco Monopoly administration, warned that such proposals could lead to social instability. We take the fact that smoking is harmful seriously, but without cigarettes the country s stability will be affected, he told the meeting. +CHINA: Public Health Education Sorely Missing (https://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews37728)
