Among adults (age 15+), 26.6% of the population smoke, with a significant difference between genders—50.5% of Chinese men and 2.1% of Chinese women smoke.
Among youth (junior high school students, median age 14), 3.9% smoke (boys 5.8%; girls 1.8%).
China has approximately 307.6 million smokers.
50.9% of adults are exposed to secondhand smoke in the workplace, 73.3% in restaurants, and 12.9% on public transportation.
57.2% of youth (ages 13-15) are exposed to secondhand smoke inside enclosed public spaces, and 44.4% are exposed at home.
An estimated 2.5 million Chinese die from tobacco-related diseases each year.
The number of annual deaths from tobacco-attributable lung, tracheal, and bronchus cancers in China has more than doubled in the past 20 years, reaching about 460,000.
Smoking causes almost 23% of all cancers in China.
Chinese male smokers are almost 6 times more likely to develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) than Chinese male non-smokers.
China is the world's largest producer and consumer of tobacco. The Chinese tobacco market is dominated by the government monopoly China National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC), which holds virtually the entire Chinese cigarette market. Nearly 2.4 trillion cigarettes were sold in China in 2018.
China ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control on August 28, 2005. The treaty went into effect on January 9, 2006
