Factoids from today's Asia Times (2x 2004):

More than 310 million Chinese or 30% of the population over the age of 15 are smokers who spend about 310 billion yuan on nearly 2 trillion cigarettes a year. In 2002, the national treasury pulled in 105 billion yuan in taxes and 40.61 billion yuan in profits from the tobacco industry, a 100% government monopoly (see www.tax.gov.cn). Tobacco is the single biggest source of revenue for the state coffers: in 2003's ranking of 100 top tax contributors, 34 tobacco companies made the list, and together they accounted for 35% (85 billion yuan) of the aggregate total (242 billion yuan) of the tax receipts from these 100 companies. By comparison, the building materials industry has an estimated sales revenue of 490 billion yuan for 2004 but a projected profit of 21 billion yuan, only half of the tobacco industry's earnings.

Since the government is heavily dependent on the tobacco industry for its budget, it is only natural to protect the golden goose with, among other preferential treatments, a relatively light tax at 46%, compared with the stiff 60-90% in developed countries. This is in spite of the fact that about 750,000 Chinese people die of tobacco-related diseases each year, according to medical reports. Criticism by concerned citizens is barely audible.

(http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FJ02Ad04.html)

We might well ask: how did tobacco get to China in the first place? How did it become so very widespread?

Research on Tobacco in China --261 pages of World Bank report in pdf...

Emerging tobacco hazards in China: 1. Retrospective proportional mortality study of one million deaths (BMJ 1998;317:1411-1422 [21 November])

Smoking in China: Findings of the 1996 National Prevalence Survey Gonghuan Yang, MD et al. JAMA. 1999;282:1247-1253.

Smoking Among Youths in China Therese Hesketh et al. American Journal of Public Health October 2001, Vol 91, No. 10 pp 1653-1655

China's Largest Oriental Tobacco Production, Export Base Established from Tobacco China Online --and TCO's home page

TOBACCO IN CHINA AND SNUFF BOTTLES (Macau Magazine)

Tobacco was first used as medicine and came to the East from the Americas perhaps in Portuguese ships. In China, snuff or "small tobacco sample" soon became a sophisticated habit and prompted the production of little bottles that were to capture markets and connoisseurs in both hemispheres

International Tobacco Giants in Process of Establishing Ventures in China (Robert Weissman listserv posting)

article: "Agglomeration and the local state: the tobacco economy of Yunnan, China" Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers September 1999, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 315-329

This paper explores the interplay of local state action with historical contingency, innovation and external economies in the world's largest tobacco-producing region – Yunnan, China. Formed in a relatively unindustrialized province and promoted by local authorities as their primary revenue base, Yunnan's tobacco economy gained a headstart through concentrated resource support and ad hoc regulatory flexibility. Its further growth has drawn greatly on intraregional spillovers of knowledge of locally based institutional innovation, which foster and enhance conventional forms of external economies. Implications for the study of regional economies are discussed.

From JSTOR:

Early Prohibitions of Tobacco in China and Manchuria L. Carrington Goodrich Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 58, No. 4. (Dec., 1938), pp. 648-657.

Der erste Tabak in Japan Dorotheus Schilling Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 5, No. 1. (Jan., 1942), pp. 113-143.

Talk to China Daily smoking

Notes on Smoking in China from "The Sociology of Death"

Smoking 'will kill one third of young Chinese men' August 16, 2001 Posted: 9:23 PM HKT (1323 GMT)

Cigarette smoking in China. Prevalence, characteristics, and attitudes in Minhang District Gong YL et al. JAMA. 1995 Oct 18;274(15):1232-4.