Light up almost a quarter of a million cigarettes or face a fine. It’s not the type of warning governments usually give to smokers, but that was the edict from China’s Gongan county to civil servants on its payroll.

Concerned about a fall in its tax take as smokers turned away from locally produced cigarettes it decided to set a smoking target to encourage consumption, and has found itself embroiled in a furious health-related row.

It ordered local officials to puff their way through 230,000 packs of local Hubei-produced cigarettes over the year. If they fail to meet the target, they will be fined. The aim was to boost tax revenues since the government can impose duty on sales of cigarettes produced locally but is cannot tax those from other provinces. For years the locals have preferred cigarettes from neighbouring Hunan province, regarded as some of the highest quality in the country.

Newspapers responded with outrage to the order, criticising the policy as harmful to health and a waste of public money — in a country where more than 350 million people smoke, one million of whom die of smoking-related diseases each year.

The policy was adopted in March and announced in a formal “red letter” notice, issued by Hubei province’s Gongan county in central China. When a senior Gongan official then found three Hunan cigarette butts during an inspection of a local county office, he ordered a fine on the grounds this violated the order.

After further investigation, the fine was scrapped but the office was issued an official reprimand and the story emerged.

Some council workers described the policy as excessive with one local official, who declined to be identified, telling reporters that “the aim of this document was to stop the smoking of Hunan cigarettes”.

Gongan authorities began to backtrack, saying that their aim was not to force officials who did not smoke to take up the habit. They wanted only to boost revenues and to support the local tobacco industry. Indeed, Gongan county had a record as coming in with the lowest tax revenues from cigarettes of all counties in the region. County leaders were eager to reverse that trend and to persuade officials to abandon such famed Hunan brands as Furong Wang in favour of local products like Huanghelou.

However the uproar that has ensued has forced the government into retreat.

It posted a notice on its website saying: “We decided to remove this edict”, adding that the matter was now under study, it said.

China is the world’s largest tobacco market with about 2 trillion cigarettes sold every year. Tobacco sales, the biggest source of government revenue, brought in the equivalent of about £40 billion in the first 11 months of 2008, up 18 per cent from 2007. Gan Huibo, a senior Gongan government official, said there was no doubt that Hunan Furong Wang cigarettes were being offered at government receptions in place of local Hubei products.

He added that Hunan cigarettes accounted for 40 per cent of all those used at banquets. In China, cigarettes are de rigueur at an official banquet or reception, displayed on plates at the centre of the table and offered to guests as a sign of respect.

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Olympic Games: can Beijing stop 4m people smoking in public?

April 1, 2008

Puffing their way through more than two trillion cigarettes a year, more people smoke in China than any other country. Now the people of Beijing will have to kick the habit as the city tries to clean up its act before the Olympic Games.

Smoking is the latest target of the authorities in the capital, who are already clamping down on spitting in the street and trying to persuade commuters to leave their cars at home. It had long been rumoured that smoking would be banned in most public places for the Games, and officials have now revealed that from May 1 it will be prohibited in all government offices and on public transport. Smoke and you incur a fine of £350.

The rules appear to fall short of an outright ban in restaurants, bars and clubs, but they will have to provide non-smoking areas and hotels must offer smoke-free rooms.

Enforcing the ban will not be easy. The capital already forbids smoking in cinemas, sports arenas and venues such as airports and railway stations. In theory, Beijing’s 66,000 taxi drivers have been banned from smoking since last October and the Olympic organisers have urged a ban in all hotels serving athletes and in all competition venues and restaurants in the Olympic Village by June. But in a country where lighting up is not only a pleasure but a sign of machismo, a way to greet friends and bribe officials – a pack of 20 can cost as little as 10p – the prohibition is routinely flouted.

Cui Dalin, the Deputy Sports Minister, told legislators that the Olympics would inspire Chinese to lead healthier lives. He promptly stepped out into a non-smoking hallway and lit up. The world and Olympic 110 metre hurdles champion Liu Xiang – a national hero – advertises for Baishan, a Chinese tobacco company.

More than 350 million Chinese are smokers, about a quarter of the population. Beijing, a city of about 15 million people, is estimated to have four million smokers. A million Chinese die each year from smoking-related diseases and the number is projected to double by 2020.

Cui Xiaobo, a professor at the Capital University of Medical Sciences, said: “The world will be watching Beijing because its success means a big step towards the success of the whole world, given the large smoking population of China.”

In the thick of the fug there is an antismoking ray of light. Last year the authorities wrote to 30,000 restaurants in the city asking them to impose smoking bans. Almost all ignored the suggestion, but one took it up: a branch of the Meizhou Dongpo restaurant, serving the spicy food of southwestern Sichuan province.

Revenue plummeted by 8 per cent in the first two months but it has picked up as word has got out to non-smokers. Its posters read: “Smoke-free restaurant: a mountain forest in the city.” Its promise of fresh air is starting to win people over, Guo Xiaodong, the deputy manager, said. “Some customers didn’t understand why there was a ban in a restaurant – a public place. They think cigarettes and liquor can’t be separated.”

At the many business and bureaucratic banquets that grease the wheels of China’s vibrant economy, deal-brokering over a cigarette and several glasses of fiery baijiu liquor are de rigueur.

One Beijing female office worker voiced delight at the ban. “It will be so much nicer to go out for a meal,” she said. “But does anyone really believe it will work?”

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