Smoked Meat
China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of tobacco. It is a country that sees about a million tobacco-related deaths a year, a quarter of all such deaths worldwide.
China is a signatory to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which aims to reduce global demand for tobacco products by encouraging developing nations to adopt anti-smoking measures that are now commonplace in developed countries. China signed the convention in 2003, ratified it in 2005 and became a full member in 2006.
The mainland is home to about 350 smokers, with about 3 million people taking up the habit annually. Nearly 60 percent of males aged 15 or above are smokers. More than one million Chinese die each year ─ one every two seconds ─ from smoking related diseases. And 540 million people suffer from passive smoking. China’s culture of cigarette smoking runs very deep and is very pervasive. Most of the founders of the People’s Republic, including Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, were chain smokers.
One of the biggest difficulties the country faces in banning smoking is the fact that 56.8 percent of male doctors are smokers ─ the highest ratio in the world. The government only plans to ban smoking in all hospitals in 2011, when the convention’s timetable kicks in. According to the convention, China is required to ban smoking in all indoor public venues, office buildings and public transport from 2011.
The central government did not ban smoking in public entertainment venues, including movie-theatres, stadiums and bookshops until 1991, nor in airport terminals until 1997.
The nation grows a third of the world’s tobacco crops and manufactures a third of its cigarettes according to WHO. The State Tobacco Monopoly Administration has more than 500,000 employees in more than 1,000 companies across 33 provinces. China’s massive tobacco industry employs more than 20 million farmers and more than 10 million retailers. Pre-tax revenues from the tobacco industry amounted to 388 billion yuan in 2008 and accounted for about 8 percent of the country’s fiscal revenues. Any wonder Chinese are smoked meat?
I agree with professor Zou Fangbin, an economics professor at the Guangdong University of Business Studies who has proposed the scrapping of the state monopoly and allow companies in the private sector to compete in this lucrative deadly sector. How can the government regulate an industry it owns and controls? It can’t. The commercial and regulatory arms of the industry have to be separate. China is the only one of the 164 signatories to the WHO convention to have a monopoly.
China is a signatory to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which aims to reduce global demand for tobacco products by encouraging developing nations to adopt anti-smoking measures that are now commonplace in developed countries. China signed the convention in 2003, ratified it in 2005 and became a full member in 2006.
The mainland is home to about 350 smokers, with about 3 million people taking up the habit annually. Nearly 60 percent of males aged 15 or above are smokers. More than one million Chinese die each year ─ one every two seconds ─ from smoking related diseases. And 540 million people suffer from passive smoking. China’s culture of cigarette smoking runs very deep and is very pervasive. Most of the founders of the People’s Republic, including Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, were chain smokers.
One of the biggest difficulties the country faces in banning smoking is the fact that 56.8 percent of male doctors are smokers ─ the highest ratio in the world. The government only plans to ban smoking in all hospitals in 2011, when the convention’s timetable kicks in. According to the convention, China is required to ban smoking in all indoor public venues, office buildings and public transport from 2011.
The central government did not ban smoking in public entertainment venues, including movie-theatres, stadiums and bookshops until 1991, nor in airport terminals until 1997.
The nation grows a third of the world’s tobacco crops and manufactures a third of its cigarettes according to WHO. The State Tobacco Monopoly Administration has more than 500,000 employees in more than 1,000 companies across 33 provinces. China’s massive tobacco industry employs more than 20 million farmers and more than 10 million retailers. Pre-tax revenues from the tobacco industry amounted to 388 billion yuan in 2008 and accounted for about 8 percent of the country’s fiscal revenues. Any wonder Chinese are smoked meat?
I agree with professor Zou Fangbin, an economics professor at the Guangdong University of Business Studies who has proposed the scrapping of the state monopoly and allow companies in the private sector to compete in this lucrative deadly sector. How can the government regulate an industry it owns and controls? It can’t. The commercial and regulatory arms of the industry have to be separate. China is the only one of the 164 signatories to the WHO convention to have a monopoly.
posted by Peter de Krassel's Custom Maid Politics at 8:25 PM
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