Swirling clouds hard to clear

It’s no secret that China has a smoking problem, with the country often reffered to as "a smoking dragon" by academics.

In recent years, China has been trying to ban smoking in public places, but change has not been easy. In 2003, China signed the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which came into effect in 2006.

To help bolster the implementation of tobacco control throughout the world, the WHO introduced what it calls the MPOWER measures, which include monitoring tobacco use, enforcing bans on tobacco advertising, raising taxes on tobacco and a raft of other measures.

Since 2011, China’s Ministry of Health has banned smoking in indoor public places, indoor workplaces, public transportation and some outdoor workplaces. While people no longer smoke in public buildings like airports or hospitals, smoking bans are often ignored and rarely enforced in restaurants and other privately owned establishments.

According to a report released by John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings in 2012, the tobacco industry is a major revenue earner for the government. The China National Tobacco Corporation is the largest single manufacturer of tobacco products in the world and generates between 7 and 10% of government revenue.

Also astounding is that some 60 million people made their living from tobacco in 2009... that’s just under 4.5 percent of China’s population.