Huge e-cigarette potential in China

About 500 representatives of the global e-cigarette industry are due meet at Shenzhen, China, in August to unveil new technologies and discuss how to improve safety and health standards, according to a piece by Yanzhong Huang published by Forbes Asia.

Although the huge majority of e-cigarettes are manufactured in China, they are not popular on the local market.

However, Yanzhong said that global trends suggested that e-cigarette use would grow and would supplant regular cigarette smoking. This would happen also in China.

“If only 1 percent of China’s smoking population turned to e-cigarettes, it would mean a market of about 3.5 million e-cigarette users,” Yanzhong said.

In April, he added, China had banned party and government officials from smoking in public places or during official activities.

The tremendous challenges that China faced in enforcing the ban might encourage officials to turn to e-cigarettes as an alternative, which in turn could create a powerful example for “ordinary people” to follow.