From CNN : Smoking in China

Beijing (CNN) -- When I first came to China 39 years ago, airlines distributed cigarettes free of charge during flights. Hotel rooms were invariably furnished with free packs of cigarettes. At meetings and conferences, filter-tipped cigarettes were standard features on the podium alongside writing pads, pencils and ashtrays. Non-smoking cars were unheard of on trains.

Today, smoking remains a stubborn habit because it is an integral part of Chinese social life. Offering a cigarette is a common way to greet someone, a handy ice-breaker especially in awkward situations (I myself used to do that until I quit smoking 30 years ago).
More than 300 million people in China are regular smokers, most of them men, according to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey conducted in 2009-2010. Increasingly, large numbers of women and teenagers have also taken up the habit.

The survey, jointly conducted by the China Center for Disease Control, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, shows that seven out of 10 adults reported being exposed to secondhand smoke in a typical week.
Smoking is estimated to kill more than one million Chinese a year. They die from chronic respiratory ailments like tuberculosis and emphysema, and from cancers affecting the lungs, mouth, liver and stomach.

Another report by Chinese and international experts led by China CDC deputy director Yang Gonghuan and Tsinghua professor Hu Angang projects that the deaths attributable to tobacco in China will rise to 3.5 million per year by 2030.

"That is an astounding number given that we know how to prevent tobacco-attributable death and disease," says Dr. Sarah England, the World Health Organization's (WHO) Tobacco Free Initiative Officer in China.

Campaigning against tobacco use has always been an uphill battle.

A smoke after a meal is still customary, as indicated in the popular saying, "a smoke after dinner is better than life after death." Cigarettes are favored gifts to get things done or expedited.

Chain-smoking national leaders may have given smoking undeserved respectability. Chairman Mao was a heavy smoker, though he died at age 82. Deng Xiaoping, who preferred Panda cigarettes, died at 92.

Because many Chinese celebrities -- artists and athletes -- smoke in public, some Chinese associate wealth and sophistication with puffing a cigarette.

Tobacco is big business in China. Companies produce and sell more than 400 cigarette brands in the country, ranging from the high-end Zhonghua and Double Happiness to cheaper brands like Little Panda and Yellow Pagoda.

The tobacco industry has been so profitable it was able to pay the government $75.13 billion in taxes in 2009, said Zhang Xiulian, spokesman of the State Tobacco Monopoly Bureau.

Unlike some other countries, China does not require cigarette packaging to carry any warning about health hazards. "The tobacco industry's obstruction is the fundamental cause of ineffective tobacco control," says the report coauthored by Yang and Hu.
In recent years, the Chinese government has banned tobacco companies from public advertising and from sponsoring sports and cultural events. It has also launched education campaigns in schools and in local media.

Five years ago this week, China officially became a party to the World Health Organization's Framework Convention Tobacco Control. So far, China's scorecard is poor.

"There is still a huge gap between the existing domestic laws and regulations and the FCTC's requirements, and the implementation and enforcement of existing laws are poor and ineffective," says the report by Yang and Hu.

"Numerous public misconceptions remain about the health hazards of smoking and secondhand smoke. Mainstream society considers smoking an accepted behavior and smoking remains popular."

The Chinese government has recently decreed a ban on smoking in all public places, workplaces and on public transportation.

However, the All-China Women's Federation appears unimpressed.

"The government has not taken enough measures to restrict smoking in public areas. It is not just a question of weak regulations but also weak implementation," says a statement from the federation, a quasi-government group that lobbies for women's rights and has 40 million members.

In fact, the ban on smoking in restaurants, pubs, coffee shops and karaoke bars has largely been ignored. The government is said to have deployed 100,000 inspectors nationwide to enforce the ban, but the fines (about $1.40 per offense) are too low to make a difference.

"I come home from bars smelling like smoke," says Feliz Lopez, a non-smoking 20-year-old college student visiting from New York. "Restaurants and bars assume patrons smoke so there are ashtrays on tables, and there is no distinction between smoking and non-smoking sections."

Experts acknowledge it is hard to curb tobacco use. But England is certain China can do it.

"We have seen both developed and developing countries from New Zealand to Uruguay implement highly effective tobacco control plans, bring down the smoking rates and save lives," she says. "With political will, it is entirely feasible to stop the tobacco epidemic in China through interventions."

Has Wikileaks Cost Lives? Has US Actions Cost Lives?

I note that the US Government is seeking to use force Twitter to provide lots of information on lots of people who have been in contact with Wikileaks...
The US Government asks: Has Wikileaks cost lives? Such an interesting question for a Government to ask when it continues to imprison, torture and kill innocent people beyond the dreams of any islamist-christian fundamentalist madman.
USA: "We must be vigilant in protecting ourselves from any responsibility in what we do. Truth is not our Truth."

Understanding Australia

I think that one of the things I found hard to understand, returning to Australia from Asia is this: So much of Asia is preparing for and dealing with huge populations and diverse economies but Australia isn't; and it won't need to.

There is enough stuff to dig up, export, basic unimproved minerals etc, for decades to come. The problems here more relate to an ageing basically homogenous population and, as always, the huge costs of the distances between cities/settlements. No great problems, no great challenges, no great pressure to innovate or pursue a new definition; no population pressures, not much suffering...and it won't change. It's understandable.

I was surprised, upon returning here, how many old people there were...people my age and older, compared to anywhere in Asia...and how many very large, fat people; but this is what happens in all First World countries I think. Mildly overweight people generally live longer than slim people anyway.

It's an uncrowded country and no one here much wants that to change. There is great anger whenever anyone suggests Australia should have a larger population now or in 30 years time, and there is the usual xenophobia about Asians and Arabs in particular. This great fear; as always unfounded, yet persistent now for more than 150 years does not vary. I think it's because Australia doesn't have any neighbours on the border...there is just the ocean. The Ocean Continent...so there has never been any need to interact much with anyone, or to solve problems...because there have been no problems with the ocean.

You can see the same kind of Mentality with the UK...and also with the USA who only have Canada and Mexico to have 'issues' with. None of these cultures know much about resolving problems with neighbours, per se.

It may well be a defining thing about UK and USA culture...the absence of negotiation in so many areas over so many  hundreds of years, so there is no particular skill development; thus in its absence is an odd chimera of 'Independence' and what is defined 'Freedom'...not by any struggle, innovation and effort but just conferred by geographical reality.

It can't be a criticism, and it's not. At the same time a city like Sydney has just about the most ethnically diverse 4-million-people-urban population on earth, and all or most doing reasonably well.

China Rising

I know I tend to go on about it, but I do find China's Rise so remarkable. Sure it's been accellerated in the past few years, relatively, simply due to the various financial collapsing dominoes in the West... but then you can't blame China for being wise and financially conservative, and careful. This is hardly a sign of aggression; it is in fact a sign of thwe opposite...a certain stoic and steady track forward.
What I see with China Rising is the most remarkable arrival of Dominant Culture, outstripping in size and power and impact everything that has come before, including the Romans, British, American empires. The Chinese 'Empire' is travelling faster and investing more in its own future, in its infrastructure, in its people, industries, education, etc and in its relationships, especially with its 16 border neighbours, than any power on Earth has ever done.
Whilst being a significant player within Globalisation, per se, it is also the leading and only Alternate to the US-Euro Globalisation 'system' and will outstrip it as time goes by.
The China Model, the Walled World Model, will dominate as time goes by and without invading and blowing up and pillaging other sovereign nations and in this way alone is a far superior model for human growth and development than any we have seen on Earth to date.
Also what is rising is not Chinese Communism at all...what is rising is Confucianism, as a thought-action discipline and as a social-system, for the first time outside the mainland.
I think the impact of both Zhonguo's Rise and the Rise of Confucianism, world wide, will provide the largest change to all human systems on Earth and will have a much greater impact and last far longer than any before it.
I think that we do live in remarkable times, to witness this unstoppable rise. It will be mostly beneficial to China, of course, as it should be; at the same time, we, on the fringe of this massive change, will do well enough to trade fairly and peacefully.

Visit to China February 2011

We will be visiting Schezuan Province in China in February for New Year Celebrations and visiting the municipality of ChongQing, with its population of 38.4 million. A city-municipality slioghtly larger than the Australian island of Tasmania...which, I guess, means it's a big city.

Very Very Fast Train, Beijing-Shanghai

On Dec. 3, 2010, a China-made CRH380A train set a new speed record of 486.1 km per hour on a test run on the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway.

Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Rail

The Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway will be put into operation by the middle of June this year, Chinese Railways Minister Liu Zhijun said at a conference Tuesday.


The high-speed link connecting the country's two most important cities will open ahead of its original schedule, previously set in 2012.

The construction of the 1,318-km railway was started in April 2008 with total investment estimated at 220.9 billion yuan (around 32.5 billion U.S. dollars).

The railway is expected to cut travel time between Beijing, China's capital in the north, and Shanghai, the country's economic center in the east, to less than five hours, compared with the current 10-hour rail journey.

On Dec. 3, 2010, a China-made CRH380A train set a new speed record of 486.1 km per hour on a test run on the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway.

Also at the conference, Liu said the combined length of China's operating high-speed railways had reached 8,358 km by the end of 2010.

Total length of high-speed railways would reach 13,000 km by 2011, and 16,000 km by 2015, Liu said.

China plans to invest 700 billion yuan for the construction of railways this year, Liu said.

He said the total length of China's railways had reached 91,000 km by 2010, and the railways would reach 120,000 km in five years.
In 2010, 1.68 billion passenger journeys were conducted through the nation's railways, up 9.9 percent year on year. The railways had also transported 3.63 billion tonnes of goods, up 9.3 percent.