The contribution to which cigarettes play in the societies around China is enormous. For that matter, the majority of actual global cigarette consumption comes from China where one third of the world's smokers are puffing away. The cigarette industry is the number one tax payer in China, resulting to roughly 10% of the governments annual total revenues.
Many nations around the world where cigarettes are deemed popular and unpopular, governments tend to demonstrate the health affects and risks of cigarettes. In China though, the smoker awareness of these affects from cigarettes is considerably low. The Chinese government has not been keen to instrument these health risks as many other countries have from all over the world, to be honest why they would possibly want to damage their own revenues by giving cigarettes bad press…
If you look at it form another angle, there are approximately half a million workers in the cigarette industry, another four million that work in the retail side of the cigarette industry, and also there is 3.5 million farmers of tobacco that work to supply them. You can say that practically that China and their people thrive on cigarettes and the demand for them. Despite the continuous improvement in wages and lifestyle, it is still a developing country for that fact. So it is understandable to why the Chinese allow the cigarette industry to remain in its current state.
The worrying part of having such a large number of smokers is the costs and toll it has on the health sector in China. We ourselves have experienced here in the U.S what drastic consequences come of smoking to health in our societies, and many nations around the world have also experienced as well. 37 % of the China population are smokers, and the number of new smokers per year is quite frightening, with nearly 20million people choosing to engage in the smoking of cigarettes.
The income and reliance by the Chinese government on cigarettes and the cigarette industry means that it is unlikely that we will see any change in the current situation. You just feel for the Chinese people and smokers who are unaware and uneducated to what affect cigarettes can have on us. This figure is backed up a survey that resulted to 70% of smokers in China who say that they would not like to smoke. In more economically developed countries this percentage is substantially the opposite where the majority of smokers actually do want to quit.
Anti-smoking groups in China have attempted to voice these concerns of smoking but are not funded well enough and are largely outspoken. It’s a balance between how willing the Chinese Government are to consider their own public health in regards to their revenues, the same problem with cigarettes occurs throughout the globe and continues to trouble and cause a lot of conflict.
