China is a nation of nicotine addicts with over 350 million smokers who burn 1 in 3 of the world’s cigarettes. As smoking is declining in the world’s developed nations, rising prosperity in China has been accompanied by increased tobacco production and consumption. Consequently one million Chinese die each year from smoking-related illnesses, a figure that will increase to two million by 2020 according to a recent study. With the government’s avowed concern for its people’s health, why hasn’t the Chinese government taken serious action to curb the nation’s habit?
First and foremost, tobacco is still a pillar of the booming Chinese economy. The belief that tobacco controls and education programmes designed to reduce the number of Chinese smokers would damage the national economic interest prevails under the influence of the business oriented ministries that dominate tobacco control policy. Indeed the state-dominated tobacco industry generates enormous revenues for the government (7.6% of the government’s total revenue in 2005) It is particularly important in some of China’s poorest regions, like Yunnan where 62% of all local tax revenue comes from tobacco leaf production. Add to that the considerable political pressure on the government from the tobacco industry, both domestic and foreign, over and above health lobbyists and it isn’t hard to see why there is a reluctance to tackle the smoking issue.
However as the Chinese economy continues to grow and diversify, the dominance of the tobacco sector is arguably declining in relative overall importance. In the wake of SARS and the current threat of a Swine Flu pandemic, Beijing further insists it has learned that shortcuts in health care can damage the economy in the long term. Since smoking imposes a massive and cumulative disease burden which will bear an ever-increasing cost for the Chinese economy as it’s army of smokers age, wouldn’t more extensive tobacco controls be prudent?
The answer is almost certainly ‘yes’ in terms of the nation’s health, yet one cannot escape the reality that the influence of Chinese public-health advocates is very weak. And, even according to the more extreme financial estimates, all the direct and indirect healthcare costs of smoking do not amount to even half of the annual revenue the government recieves from tobacco taxes. Since most Chinese pay for their own health care the financial incentive to levy smoking controls is still sidelined in favour of a laisse-faire attitude by the State. For now at least, it seems the government has calculated that China can afford to keep smoking.
One must also consider that smoking still serves a crucial social function in many Chinese people’s daily interactions and network building. When people meet it is a deeply engrained custom to offer cigarettes to signal respect and hospitality for example. And, as ministers have argued, curbing smoking rates in China would hurt the poor by taking away one of their few affordable pleasures: a pleasure that Mao allegedly guaranteed the people as part of the Communist revolution when he offered them ‘food, shelter and cigarettes’.
For the government to act too severely against such powerful social forces could create a potentially divisive backlash. In March 2007 at the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference the need to introduce measures to control tobacco smoking was raised and the overwhelming response was that smoking controls would threaten social stability. At a time when many of China’s poorest are dispossessed of land, jobs, and rights of all kinds, any threat to social stability is not taken lightly in Beijing despite the obvious health implications smoking creates. China’s top brass need only look at how smokers in the former USSR rioted when they couldn’t get cigarettes to illustrate the need to tread carefully with a nation that enjoys their smoke!
Despite some recent steps towards tobacco controls with China’s pledge to ban tobacco advertising by 2011 amongst other minor restrictions chalked up for the near future, for now the introduction –let alone enforcement- of stricter, western style tobacco controls is simply an unrealistic prospect that China feels it cannot afford. The income from and social desirability of smoking in China are seemingly just too great for the government to challenge at present inspite of the obvious and cumulative detrimental health concerns…
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