Tag: China

  • China craves Cohibas

    China craves Cohibas

    Habanos will this year seek to expand and diversify its presence in China, according to the company’s development vice president Jose Maria Lopez, speaking during an interview with the Xinhua News Agency.

    Lopez said there was great potential for increasing sales in China, which, in the medium term, could become Habanos’ most important market.

    The story said that, according to ‘official figures’, China became the third largest market for the company in 2017, after Spain and France, with an increase in sales of 33 percent on those of 2016.

    Due to a growing demand for premium cigars in China, Habanos reached an agreement with the China National Tobacco Corporation in the summer of 2017 to increase sales and work together to promote a knowledge of, and taste for, Cuban cigars in China.

    Lopez said that Chinese consumers preferred Habanos’ most exclusive products, including its Cohiba brand, “which is our most important trademark and greatest exponent of luxury within the Cuban cigar market”.

    “Between 40 and 50 percent of the Chinese demand is concentrated in the Cohiba brand, which is very high,” said Lopez. “One of our intentions when we talk about developing the tobacco culture in that country is to educate the Chinese consumer that not all cigars are Cohiba.”

    Working with the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, through which domestic imports are made to the Chinese mainland, growth rates of between 20 and 30 percent per year were expected, said Lopez.

    In addition, the company has shops in China’s Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, and it is working to attract customers through the China Duty Free Group in the two regions.

  • Smoking ban sought

    Smoking ban sought

    Tobacco-control advocates have called for an outright ban on smoking throughout China’s railway network, according to a Xinhua news agency story quoting the China Daily.

    The call for a ban came after air-quality inspections reportedly found ‘dangerous levels of harmful pollutants’ on slow trains, most of which currently allow tobacco use in designated areas.

    Researchers led by the Chinese Association of Tobacco Control examined four slow trains in October. Three of the trains had designated smoking areas, while one had banned tobacco use due to an earlier lawsuit filed by a passenger.

    The story said that the results of the inspections, released yesterday, showed that the concentrations of PM2.5 particles [fine particulate matter] ‘in carriages of the three trains where passengers can smoke’ exceeded 500 micrograms per cubic meter, meaning the air could be considered hazardous to human health.

    China’s high-speed rail networks all prohibit smoking, but passengers on slow trains can smoke in designated areas, often in the connecting areas between carriages.

    Cui Xiaobo, deputy director of the Beijing Tobacco Control Association, said second-hand smoke was likely to cause life-threatening, acute illnesses.

    “A lot of emergency medical requests occurring on trains are linked to vulnerable groups, including the elderly, children, pregnant women and those with chronic diseases who breathe in smoke,” he said.

    The researchers interviewed 94 passengers on the four trains and found that 77 of them would applaud a complete ban on smoking on slow trains.

    People made 3.37 billion railway trips in China during 2018.

  • Smugglers move with times

    Smugglers move with times

    Customs authorities in China’s Zhejiang Province have arrested 27 suspects allegedly involved in smuggling heat-not-burn devices and consumable sticks with a value of more than 400 million yuan (US$58.4 million), according to a Xinhua news agency story.
    Customs representatives speaking in the city of Ningbo on Monday said that more than 470,000 cartons of sticks had been confiscated in the latest operation.
    Earlier, 30,000 cartons of sticks and 500 tobacco-heating devices had been seized while taking down three cross-border smuggling gangs.
    A suspect surnamed Li was said to have confessed that his accomplice had bought sticks and devices in Japan to smuggle them into China.
    Li alone was said to have smuggled more than 100,000 cartons before his arrest.
    Investigators were said also to have identified nearly 300 other smugglers.
    The Xinhua story said that ‘electronic cigarettes’ could not be sold in China legally. However, it said, smugglers resorted to online platforms and instant messaging applications to sell them disguised as other products.
    The story referred to the smuggled products throughout as ‘electronic cigarettes’, but it seems likely that they were in fact heated-tobacco products given that reference was made in the story specifically to ‘tobacco heating devices’ and ‘cartons of cigarettes’.
    The story seems to be questionable also in claiming that electronic cigarettes cannot be sold in China, though, again, the question of legality could refer to heat-not-burn products. According to the recent report, No fire, no smoke: Global state of tobacco harm reduction, electronic cigarettes can be sold legally in China.

  • Nation-wide ban sought

    Nation-wide ban sought

    Anti-tobacco campaigners in China have renewed calls for a national ban on smoking in public places, according to a story by Wang Xiaoyu for the China Daily.

    The Beijing-based Thinktank Research Center for Health Development (TRCHD), which lobbies for tougher tobacco control measures, called last week for the creation of a smoke-free environment for the public.

    The latest draft of a basic medical care and health promotion law, which was published in October and is under review by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, highlights the need for publicity campaigns to curb smoking and higher taxes on tobacco products.

    Kelvin Khow, a technical officer for the World Health Organization’s Tobacco Free Initiative, said the new draft was encouraging, “but regarding smoke-free public places, we need stronger wording – to ban smoking in all indoor areas”.

    The draft, he said, used less-specific phrases such as “control smoking in public places”.

    Khow said nearly 90 percent of Chinese people were not protected by smoke-free laws, making them vulnerable to health risks from second-hand smoke.

    “We’re hurting people by not acting on a national law,” he said.

    Twenty-one Chinese cities have banned smoking in indoor public spaces, with the latest being Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi province, in November.

    Zhangjiakou, co-host of the 2022 Winter Olympics, is expected to join them soon. It released a draft regulation in September.

    Wu Yiqun, deputy director of the TRCHD, said tobacco companies were hindering the launch of a nationwide ban.

    “At the very least, we should stop advertising and sponsorship by tobacco businesses and introduce larger graphic warnings on all tobacco products,” she said. “A healthy China must be smoke free.”

  • Illegal trade evolving

    Illegal trade evolving

    The Internet and courier services are increasingly being used for smuggling tobacco products, including counterfeit ones, in China, according to a Xinhua News Agency story.
    Zhao Hongshun, deputy chief of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, told a press conference on Friday that the production of and trade in counterfeit tobacco products had evolved.
    Production sites were now changed frequently, while those involved in the illegal trade used Internet-based distribution and decentralized modes of transportation.
    In response, Zhao said, China’s tobacco authorities and public security agencies would launch a campaign targeting crimes related to tobacco products that were transported through courier services.
    Between January and November 2018, 363,000 cartons of fake cigarettes and 137,000 cartons of smuggled cigarettes were seized by law enforcers, Zhao said.
    At the same time, 6,306 suspects were detained, of whom 2,631 were subject to criminal prosecution.

  • Flights of fancy

    Flights of fancy

    Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport is closing all the tobacco smoking rooms in its domestic and international terminals starting from tomorrow, according to a Xinhua News Agency report.
    The airport terminals have been designated non-smoking areas under new smoking control regulations brought in by the city of Hangzhou, the capital of China’s Zhejiang Province.
    At the same time, the airport is setting up new smoking areas outside the terminals.
    Meanwhile, the news agency reported that the airport is being expanded as part of a project that will make it the second largest aviation hub in the Yangtze river delta region, after Shanghai Pudong International Airport.

  • Vaping is not smoking

    Vaping is not smoking

    There are no national regulations governing the use of electronic cigarettes in China, though increasing numbers of smokers are turning to these devices, according to a Xinhua News Agency story quoting a China Daily report.
    The Beijing Tobacco Control Association has reportedly received a growing number of reports and complaints about e-cigarettes being used in public places.
    But existing control regulations in the capital city cover only the use in public places of traditional, combustible tobacco products. So while law enforcement officers can impose fines on those who smoke combustible cigarettes in public places, they are powerless to act against those who use e-cigarettes.
    Yang Jie, a researcher at the Tobacco Control Office of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, was quoted as saying that e-cigarettes were not considered to be either drugs or electronic products, which created a dilemma in respect of effective supervision.
    The China Daily report quoted a World Health Organization official in China as saying there was a risk of unintended health consequences from exposure to electronic nicotine delivery systems, due to the high nicotine concentration in the e-liquids of some of them.
    And it reported Zhang Jianshu, president of the Association, as saying that his Association believed that many e-cigarettes were harmful to smokers and others, and that it would promote the inclusion of such devices in tobacco control law enforcement.

  • Delivering health by text

    Delivering health by text

    Chinese researchers have reported some success in using text messages to encourage smokers to quit, according to a Xinhua News Agency story.
    The results of the study published on Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine showed that 6.5 percent of smokers who had received a 12-week, mobile-phone-based intervention had quit by the end of the study.
    The researchers at the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University said the intervention could prove to be more feasible and to have greater reach than in-person treatments.
    The intervention had great potential to improve population health and should be considered for large-scale use in China, the researchers added.
    The study was conducted as a randomized controlled trial across China from August 2016 to May 2017, among 1,369 adult smokers.
    Participants were randomly assigned to a 12-week intervention consisting of either high-frequency or low-frequency messaging, or to a control group that received text messages unrelated to quitting.
    At the end of the trial, 6.5 percent of those in the high-frequency group, 6.0 percent of those in the low-frequency group and 1.9 percent of those in the control group had quit smoking.

  • Smoke signals

    Smoke signals

    A visiting professor at one of China’s top universities has apologized for smoking during his lectures and for encouraging students to take up the habit, which, he said, was “inspirational,” according to a story in the South China Morning Post.
    Wang Meng, a media lecturer at the Communication University of China, Beijing, apologized for his behaviour on the microblogging site Weibo.
    ‘It is wrong to smoke in public places, and it is even worse that I was smoking in a classroom,’ he reportedly wrote. ‘I did not care about students’ feelings and did not consider the possible impact of second-hand smoke on my students.’
    Smoking is banned in indoor and certain outdoor public spaces in several major Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Xian.
    Wang, who also works at the state broadcaster CCTV, pledged to quit smoking as part of his Weibo statement, which drew many sympathetic comments from his students.
    The Communication University of China released an official statement condemning Wang’s actions, adding that he had offered to resign as a part-time professor. ‘The classroom is a sacred place,’ the university wrote on Weibo. ‘Wang’s conduct violates Beijing’s smoking control laws and a teacher’s code of ethics.’

  • China conference confirmed

    China conference confirmed

    Organizers of the TFWA (Tax Free World Association) China’s Century Conference said yesterday that registration for the conference had opened.
    According to a TFWA press note issued yesterday, the Conference is due to be held in Sanya, Haitang Bay, Hainan, on March 5-7.
    The China Duty Free Group (CDFG), which is China’s leading travel retailer with more than 200 duty free stores at airports, railway stations, ferry terminals and other travel locations, has been named as the ‘Diamond Sponsor’ of the event.
    “We are delighted that China Duty Free Group is supporting our conference in Hainan as Diamond Sponsor,” Erik Juul-Mortensen, TFWA president, was quoted as saying. “The event is taking place close to the CDF Sanya International Duty-Free Shopping Complex, one of the most impressive duty free operations anywhere in the world. As such, we feel that the location for the 2019 conference is entirely appropriate.
    “With the support of CDFG and our other valued sponsors, we will strive to provide delegates with another informative and enjoyable conference in China, which of course remains one of the largest and most important markets in our industry.”
    The conference, which will take place in the Grand Hyatt Hotel at Sanya Haitang Bay, is organized by TFWA in partnership with the Asia Pacific Travel Retail Association (APTRA).