The Chinese regime launched a public ‘no smoking’ policy on Monday—that’s five years after it signed the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Under the new ban, people cannot smoke inside public spaces. Business must display “No Smoking” signs and outdoor smoking areas must not adversely affect non-smokers. [Li Fei, Beijing Resident]: “Actually, I am a smoker but I support the ban on smoking in public places, especially in restaurants. Usually the air in restaurants is not that good and they are quite crowded. If there are people smoking t ... Jump to full article >>

A Chinese-owned tobacco factory will reopen soon after being temporarily closed last month when it ran out of leaf and packaging supplies. The small factory employs just five people and suspended its operation – with four people being laid off for a period. Manager Hong-Moon said the company was waiting for the next shipment of its supplies from overseas. He said the factory produced one box containing 20 packs of cigarette a day and sold them mainly to retail outlets in the capital Tarawa. Hong-Moon said the two main products were King Size (strong) and Snowberg (light) and the cigarette ... Jump to full article >>

Cigars seem to be the latest object of desire for the growing number of wealthy Chinese, according to Habanos, Cuba’s premium cigar distributor. The company said this week that China has now replaced Germany as the world’s third biggest cigar importer. It’s the latest example of several things: the growth of conspicuous consumption in China; the Chinese interest in foreign luxury brands; and the importance of Chinese growth to foreign manufacturers, which needs it to offset the effects of weakening demand in the developed world. Javier Terres, Habanos vice president, told reporters in H ... Jump to full article >>

BEIJING — China is ordering makers of films and TV shows to limit the amount of smoking depicted on-screen, the latest effort to curb rampant tobacco use in the country with the largest number of smokers in the world. The order from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television viewed Tuesday on its website orders producers to minimize plot lines and scenes involving tobacco and show smoking only when necessary for artistic purposes or character development. Minors under age 18 cannot be shown smoking or buying cigarettes, and characters may not smoke in public buildings or other p ... Jump to full article >>

Smoking cigars, once a pastime reserved for the elite and seen as a symbol of bourgeois decadence in China, is now enjoyed by thousands with numbers growing daily nationwide. According to recent industry reports more than RMB 2.2 billion is spent on cigars in China a year, and the numbers are going up. In major Chinese cities — with Shanghai leading the way — a Chinese cigar culture is clearly taking hold. But what’s interesting is that women are starting to join the ranks of newly curious, newly moneyed and status-hungry men, gaining entry into the world of Chinese cigar af ... Jump to full article >>

Last month, the Chinese government announced plans to increase the tobacco tax this year. BEIJING – Chinese tobacco dealers have started socking away cigarettes ahead of a probably increase in tobacco taxes, the Global Times reports. The State Administration of Taxation (SAT) announced last month that the government would jack tobacco taxes this year to curb tobacco use. “Wholesale purchases of most cigarettes have soared since September and some of the best-selling brand cigarettes are in short supply,” said one tobacco store owner in Kunming, Yunnan Province. Raising tobacco taxes is ... Jump to full article >>

BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) — China’s Health Ministry admitted Monday that it has a long way to go in tobacco control, amid criticism of the country’s failure to honor its commitments to the World Health Organization (WHO). China was the world’s largest tobacco producer and consumer, and tobacco control was a complicated social activity, which involved political, economic and health sectors, said ministry spokesman Deng Haihua at a press conference. Deng’s remarks came after a report issued Thursday which said China’s progress in tobacco control was limited a ... Jump to full article >>

BEIJING, China – China’s addiction to huge revenues from its state-owned tobacco monopoly is hindering anti-smoking measures, potentially costing millions of lives in the country with the world’s largest number of smokers, experts warned Thursday. The health and other costs of smoking already exceed the tobacco industry’s economic contributions by at least $9 billion, said a report prepared by a group of prominent Chinese public health experts and economists. If trends continue, by 2030 an estimated 3.5 million Chinese will die from smoking each year — three times the ... Jump to full article >>

China is trying to evade a global agreement on cutting smoking by avoiding putting graphic images of cancer patients and sick babies on cigarette packets, Chinese anti-smoking groups have claimed. Health experts say the photographic warnings, which are already used in Hong Kong and this week became mandatory in the US from 2012, are essential if China is to head off a “death wave” from smoking-related illnesses from in the coming decade. China’s State Tobacco Monopoly Administration has been accused of failing to implement a World Health Organisation agreement the Chinese si ... Jump to full article >>

Health experts and legal scholars said Monday that they are disappointed with the government’s record in the area of tobacco control. At a seminar in Beijing Monday, law experts and medical professionals took part in dozens of activities to discuss the topic and call attention to the harm that cigarettes and other tobacco products are causing in China. Participants at the seminar, organized by the ThinkTank Research Center for Health Development, a public health non-governmental organization, said the government has done little to curb smoking or adopt international principles to fight t ... Jump to full article >>

Representatives from 45 organizations attending a seminar in Beijing on Saturday proposed a nationwide rejection of contributions from tobacco companies that are linked to sponsorship deals, and called for more efforts to control tobacco use. Nearly five years after the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control took effect in China in January 2006, many tobacco companies are still reluctant to follow the convention exactly, according to those attending the seminar. The companies are targeting new customers through sponsorship of special programs. For example, there at least 100 primary schools i ... Jump to full article >>