Tag: China

Medicinal cigarettes
Tobacco companies in China are ‘luring’ customers with cigarettes ‘laced’ with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), according to a story in The Global Times.
In a post that ‘went viral’ on Tuesday, a Sina Weibo [China’s biggest social media network] user was said to have called attention to a trend for Chinese tobacco manufacturers to use TCM as a marketing tool.
Photos by ‘ZhuiFengShao JianLiuQuan’ show cigarettes labeled as having added tangerine peel and loquat, which are used in TCM for digestive problems.
Another contains Chinese caterpillar fungus, which is famous in Chinese medicine as, among other things, an expensive aphrodisiac.
The Times said that China Tobacco Sichuan was one of the companies selling the products, ‘according to reports’.
The ‘herbs’ were found in small ‘liquid-gel beads’ in the filters, as was the case in respect of China’s more common fruit-flavored cigarettes.
Quoting ‘media’ sources, the Times said that anti-smoking groups in China had railed against claims that TCM-laced cigarettes were in some way healthy since the early 2000s, but the use of TCMs in cigarettes goes back a lot longer than that.
Netizens had their fun of course. “I caught a cold, I hope this can cure my cough,” wrote Judy_Kim.
December 22, 2017
Growing pollution in China
China is expected to expand its use of environment-damaging plastic film to boost crop production, according to a Bloomberg News story.
The film traps moisture and heat, and helps control weeds and pests. It reduces water demand by 20-30 percent and it enables crops to be grown in both drier and colder environments.
It is used as a mulch over 12 percent of China’s farmland and on 93 percent of the country’s tobacco fields.
Overall, about 1.45 million metric tons of polyethylene are spread in sheets across 20 million ha (49 million acres) — an area about half the size of California — of farmland in China.
And use of the translucent material might exceed two million tons by 2024 and cover 22 million ha, according to Yan Changrong, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing.
The downside is that polypropylene film is not biodegradable and often not recycled.
Potentially cancer-causing toxins that can be released into the soil from the plastic residue are said to be present at levels of 60-300 kg per ha in some provinces.
While polyethylene contamination occurs worldwide, the threat is especially acute in China, where about a fifth of arable land contained levels of toxins exceeding national standards, according to 2014 government estimates.
The Bloomberg story is at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-05/plastic-film-covering-12-of-china-s-farmland-contaminates-soil.
September 6, 2017
Smoking costs unaffordable
China will be unable to bear the economic and social costs of tobacco smoking if it doesn’t speed up its tobacco-control efforts, according to a story by Sun Wenyu for the People’s Daily Online.
A recent report issued jointly by 37 organizations, including the Chinese Preventative Medicine Association and the Chinese Association of Tobacco Control, said that China’s tobacco consumption accounted for 44 percent of worldwide consumption.
China had added 15 million new smokers in five years and the country needed urgently to step up its efforts to control tobacco.
The results of a nationwide adult tobacco survey that was published in 2015 indicated that 27.7 percent of Chinese people above the age of 15 were smokers. It indicated, too, that the total number of smokers in the country had reached 315 million.
According to the ‘Healthy China 2030’ blueprint issued by the State Council, China aims to lower the proportion of smokers to 20 percent by 2030.
The story said that ‘experts’ believed that tobacco consumption had become a global issue that threatened public health and led to serious consequences. Smoking caused major chronic non-infectious diseases, and these diseases accounted for 85 percent of the total deaths in China.
Though progress had been made, China had a long way to go before it could reach the goals set in the Healthy China 2030 blueprint.
It would be unaffordable for the country to pay for the economic and social losses if it didn’t speed up the process of tobacco control.
The story said that experts had called on the country to pass legislation ‘to establish a smoke-free country and comprehensively ban public smoking’.
‘In addition, the experts believe that China should reduce tobacco advertisements, increase tobacco tax, and make smoking cessation a basic public health service,’ the story said.
August 31, 2017
Leaf tax to remain
Chinese lawmakers began yesterday a review of a draft law on leaf-tobacco tax, according to a Xinhua Newswire story.
The law is due to replace a regulation that has been in place since 2006, but it is not expected to alter the rate of tax levied on leaf.
The draft law was given a first reading at a five-day bimonthly session of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, which opened on Monday.
The law stipulates that a tax rate of 20 percent will be levied on tobacco leaf buyers, the same rate as was levied under the previous regulation.
China began collecting tax on leaf tobacco sales in 2006.
Revenue from the tax was said to have increased by an average of 12 percent between 2006 and 2016 and to have totaled 109.7 billion yuan (US$16.6 billion) during that period.
August 29, 2017
Litigation launched in China
A woman in China has brought a lawsuit against the Harbin Railway Bureau that aims to have smoking on regular trains and station platforms banned, according to a GBTIMES story quoting a report in The Paper.
The Beijing Railway and Transport Court has accepted the case and the trial is scheduled to begin on August 24.
It is the first such lawsuit brought by a Chinese citizen against the authorities.
The story said that the woman, Li Yan (not her real name), was surprised to find a regular K1301 train she was travelling on between Beijing and Tianjin filled with cigarette smoke on June 9.
She noticed that many passengers and train staff were smoking in the smoking area of the train, which was under the supervision of the Harbin Railway Bureau, resulting in non-smoking passengers being subjected to second-hand smoke.
After what was described as an unpleasant journey, Li wrote letters of complaint to the National Railway Bureau and the Health and Family Planning Commissions of Beijing and Tianjin, but each of them replied that they were not responsible for the banning of smoking on trains.
Li then launched the lawsuit to ban smoking specifically on the K1301 train, as well as on the platforms of Beijing and Tianjin railway stations.
She wants also all smoking areas and paraphernalia to be removed, and she wants compensation for her ticket and a gauze mask used to reduce both her smoke inhalation and anguish. The total monetary claim comes to US$18.30.
According to the relevant regulations of Beijing and Tianjin, both cities prohibit smoking in indoor public places.
Meanwhile, all high-speed trains in China have banned passengers from lighting up, though there are designated smoking areas aboard regular trains that travel at less than 160 kilometres per hour.
August 17, 2017
Illicit machines found
Five ‘key members’ of a gang have been charged in China with producing and selling illicit tobacco machines, according to a Shanghai Daily story relayed by the TMA and quoting the Jiading District People’s Procuratorate.
It is alleged that between February and June 2016, the gang members sold five machines for 2.2 million yuan (US$327,400) in Yunxiao and Xiamen, Fujian province, and in Taiwan.
Prosecutors said that, without getting approval from the local tobacco authority, the main suspect had rented two warehouses in Jiading as workshops and hired workers to produce the tobacco manufacturing machines.
In China, tobacco production and sales are under state control.
August is clearly a busy month for illicit-machinery busts in China. On August 4 last year, this magazine reported that Shanghai police had busted a seven-member gang that built and sold illicit cigarette-making machines nationwide.
The 2016 report, which was based on a story by Janet Zhang for the Shanghai Daily quoting Shanghai Television, bore some resemblances with that of the 2017 story – certainly in respect of geography and machine prices.
The gang, which apparently operated out of the Jiading District of Shanghai, sold their machines to people in other provinces, including Fujian, Liaoning and Guangdong.
When the police busted the gang on July 12, they seized 19 machines.
According to the police, the gang had been running the business since October 2014.
The gang members were said to have bought machine parts from other places and hired people to assemble them in Jiading.
The machines, which were said to have sold at prices ranging from 250,000 yuan to 400,000 yuan, were apparently capable of producing 2,000 cigarettes a minute.
August 3, 2017
Beijing sales down
The number of cigarettes sold in Beijing during 2016 fell by eight percent year-on-year, according to a story by Wang Xiaodong for the China Daily citing a report on the health of the city’s population released by the Beijing municipal government on Wednesday.
This was said to have been the biggest decline in recent years.
The incidence of smoking among people aged 15 or older last year stood at 22.3 percent, a drop of 4.7 percentage points from that of 2014.
The number of smokers had decreased by about 200,000, the report said.
The number of cigarettes sold in Beijing last year reached 93.8 billion, the report added, citing the Beijing Bureau of Statistics.
In introducing a public-places tobacco-smoking-ban in June 2015, Beijing was said by Wang Xinmei, a member of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Shanghai’s political advisory body, to have done a good job.
Wang, who was comparing the performances of Chinese cities in introducing bans, pointed out that on all flights and trains bound for Beijing there had been repeated broadcasts informing people about the smoking ban.
That was a powerful message from which Shanghai could learn, said Wang.
July 28, 2017
CNTC, Habanos sign deal
The China National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC) and Cuba’s Habanos S.A. have signed a letter of intent on increasing Cuba’s cigar exports to China, according to a Xinhua News Agency story.
The CNTC’s general manager, Ling Chengxing, and the co-presidents of Habanos, Inocente Nunez and Luis Sanchez-Harguindey, signed the agreement in Havana on Sunday.
According to the agreement, Habanos will assist with cigar production in China while expanding its cigar sales there.
“With the support of the Cuban side and the Chinese side, and the Chinese and Cuban people, I am sure that Cuban tobacco is going to do very well in China,” said Ling, who doubles as the director-general of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, the regulator of China’s tobacco industry.
The story said that Cuba’s cigar and cigarette sales to China accounted for more than half of its sales by volume and about 70 percent by revenue.
Habanos, a joint venture between Cuba’s state-owned Cubatabaco and Altadis, an affiliate of Imperial Brands, recorded revenue of about US$450 million last year.
July 25, 2017
Illegal-trade crackdown
Chinese tobacco authorities were involved in the seizure of 195,000 cartons of smuggled and counterfeit cigarettes during the first half of this year, according to a Xinhua News Agency story quoting the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration.
Tobacco authorities at all levels were said to have worked closely with the police and customs authorities to intensify a crackdown on smuggling gangs.
Law enforcement agencies prosecuted 1,601 people for producing and selling counterfeit cigarettes.
According to Chinese law, people who sell counterfeit products worth more than 50,000 yuan (US$7,353) are liable to punishment, while the worst offenders may be sentenced to life in prison.
July 21, 2017
China’s slow ‘progress’
Despite signing a World Health Organization treaty on tobacco control more than a decade ago, China is experiencing one million deaths a year from smoking, according to a report published yesterday by the University of Waterloo’s International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (ITC) and China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP).
The ITC-China CDCP report presents the results of a 10-year longitudinal study of 8,000 smokers and 2,000 non-smokers in five major Chinese cities and five rural areas. It found, in part, that more than half of the country’s 316 smokers had no intention of quitting.
“The ITC survey shows clearly that although China has made some progress in tobacco control, their progress on combatting the number one cause of preventable death, cigarettes, has been slow,” said Geoffrey Fong, founder of the 28-country ITC Project and professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo. “For 10 years, China has not taken actions to reduce smoking that have been shown to work well in many other countries.”
In addition to finding high rates of smoking and low quitting intentions, the study found also that though awareness of the harm caused by cigarettes to smokers had increased during the past decade, it was still the lowest of any country surveyed by the ITC Project.
According to the survey, only 61 percent of Chinese smokers were aware that smoking could cause heart disease, the lowest level of awareness of any ITC country. The survey found too that second-hand smoke was present in 62 percent of workplaces and 73 percent of homes in China, the highest levels of 20 ITC countries.
“Smoking is the most important cause of chronic, non-communicable diseases, which account for nearly 90 percent of deaths in China,” said Yuan Jiang, the director of the Tobacco Control Office of the Chinese CDCP. “It is critically important for China to implement a national smoke-free law, pictorial health warnings on cigarette packages, and a complete ban on all forms of tobacco advertising.”
The report includes recommendations for strengthening tobacco control efforts, including a substantial increase in cigarette taxes. ITC data was said to show that cigarettes were more affordable in China than in any other ITC country.
“It’s now time for policymakers in China to build on the steps it has taken and to move decisively to reverse the tobacco epidemic,” said Bernhard Schwartländer, the WHO representative in China. “Findings from the ITC-China CDC[P] report present a compelling case that more action needs to be taken in China in the interest of public health.”
The ITC-China CDCP executive summary report is at: www.itcproject.org.
June 1, 2017