Cigarette smoking in China
China has recently experienced rapid economic growth and an improving Human Development
Index (HDI) ranking. It is, however, facing a number of health challenges. It is currently the world’s
largest cigarette market, with more than 350 million smokers. A higher proportion of men smoke
in China than in most other countries, including Russia and the USA. While 50% of Chinese men
smoke, only 2% of Chinese women smoke. It has been estimated that nearly 2 million Chinese
citizens a year die from smoking-related illnesses. These include smokers and those who have
suffered from passive smoking.
As well as being the largest consumer of cigarettes, China is also the world’s largest producer
of cigarettes. Tobacco is grown in a number of the provinces of China, including the province of
Yunnan. Over 3 million workers are employed in the industry, which is increasingly using advanced
technological capital equipment. However, between 2009 and 2014 the number of cigaretteproducing
firms declined from 200 to 40 as firms merged and grew in size.
Although revenue from taxes on cigarettes earned the Chinese Government 800 billion yuan in
2014 (5% of the government’s total tax revenue), it recently introduced a number of measures to
discourage smoking. It has imposed a ban on smoking in public places, hospitals, schools and
public transport. Health campaigns are also being used. Such campaigns are used throughout
the world both to discourage the consumption of some products that are thought to be harmful
to health and to encourage the consumption of products that are considered to be beneficial to
health. For example, an information campaign on the benefits of consuming fruit has met with
some success in the UK. Fig. 1 shows the impact it had on the market for fruit in the UK in 2015
Identify, from the extract, two factors of production used in producing cigarettes