China’s state-owned tobacco monopoly, China Tobacco, is not just the world’s largest cigarette company. It’s also a powerful player in China’s government, regulating both the tobacco industry and helping set health policies related to smoking.
Here are some key figures about the company.
96%
China Tobacco’s share of China’s cigarette market, as of 2022
Source: Euromonitor International
2.46 trillion
number of cigarettes sold that year in China – roughly equivalent to the number sold in the next 67 countries combined
Source: Euromonitor International
$213 billion
revenue to China’s central government in 2022 from profits and tax payments made by China Tobacco
Source: Xinhua, state-owned news agency
$214 billion
2022 defense budget of China’s central government
Source: Xinhua, state-owned news agency
-27%
decline in the number of cigarettes produced by Philip Morris International, from 2007 to 2022
Source: Philip Morris International
+14%
increase in the number of cigarettes produced by China Tobacco from 2007 to 2022
Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China, Xinhua, state-owned news agency
$0.43
price for a pack of China Tobacco’s most affordable brand of cigarettes
Source: “Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic 2021: Addressing New and Emerging Products,” World Health Organization
300 million
estimated number of smokers in China
Source: World Health Organization, 2023
80 million
approximate number of people who wouldn’t use tobacco in China today had the country’s tobacco-use declined at the same rate as the rest of the world between 2005 and 2020
Source: Analysis of tobacco-use data from the World Bank and World Health Organization
1
number of seats held by China’s public health agencies on an eight-member government committee that sets tobacco control policy
Source: Southeast Asian Tobacco Control Alliance; Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention
2
seats on the same committee held by China’s state-owned tobacco monopoly, known as China Tobacco, and its parent ministry, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology
Source: Southeast Asian Tobacco Control Alliance; Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention
4
number of China Tobacco executives in China’s official delegation to a 2021 meeting to discuss implementation and enforcement of a seminal global tobacco control treaty agreed to two decades ago
Source: “Representatives of Parties,” WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, Conference of Parties Ninth Session, Nov. 8, 2021.Note: Three of China Tobacco’s staffers are listed as members of “The General Office of the Inter-Ministerial Coordination and Leading Group on the Implementation of WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.”
68
minimum number of times the English word “shall” was incorrectly translated as “should” in the official Chinese translation of that treaty. As China Tobacco executives later wrote in a celebratory book that detailed their changes to the treaty’s translation: “The difference of one word produces a strikingly different effect."
Source: “Research on Counterproposals to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and Countermeasures to Address Its Impacts on the Chinese Tobacco Industry.” Beijing Economic Science Press, 2006, and translation analysis commissioned by The Examination of the Chinese and English versions of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
