ASIA / PACIFIC
Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
June 19, 2017
China struggles to kick world-leading cigarette habit
HARD HABIT TO BREAK. A man is seen
smoking a cigarette while sitting inside a delivery cart
in Beijing. A decade-long study has found that most
smokers in China, the world’s largest consumer of
tobacco, have no intention of kicking the habit and
remain unaware of some of the most damaging health
effects of smoking. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
By Matthew Brown
The Associated Press
EIJING — Most smokers in
China, the world’s largest tobacco
consumer, have no intention of
kicking the habit and remain unaware of
some of its most damaging health effects,
according to Chinese health officials and
outside researchers.
An estimated 316 million people smoke
in China, almost a quarter of the
population, and concerns are growing
about the long-term effects on public
health and the economy.
The vast majority of smokers are men, of
whom 59 percent told surveyors they have
no plans to quit, according to a decade-long
study by the Chinese Center for Disease
Control and Prevention and Canadian
researchers with the International
Tobacco Control project.
Such numbers have prompted efforts to
restrict the formerly ubiquitous practice.
Major cities, including Beijing and Shang-
hai, recently moved to ban public smoking,
with Shanghai’s prohibition scheduled to
go into effect in March. In 2015, the central
government approved a modest nation-
wide cigarette tax increase.
But Chinese and international health
officials argue that more is needed,
including a nationwide public smoking
ban, higher cigarette taxes, and more
aggressive health warnings. Such actions
B
are “critically important,” Yuan Jiang,
director of tobacco control for the Chinese
Center for Disease Control, said in a
statement released with the study.
A public smoking ban appeared immi-
nent last year. The government health
ministry said in December that it would
happen by the end of 2016, but that has yet
to materialize.
“They have to figure out what’s impor-
tant as a health policy,” said Geoffrey Fong
of Canada’s University of Waterloo, one of
the authors of the study. “Every third man
that you pass on the street in China will
affordable, while low taxes keep the cost of
some brands at less than $1 a pack.
Sixty percent of Chinese smokers were
unaware that cigarettes can lead to
strokes and almost 40 percent weren’t
aware that smoking causes heart disease,
according to the study, which was released
on World No Tobacco Day, when the World
Health Organization and others highlight
health risks associated with tobacco use.
Judith Mackay, an anti-tobacco advo-
cate based in Hong Kong, said China has
made strides with public smoking bans in
some cities and a similar ban covering
schools and universities, but that’s not
enough.
“This is the first time there has been a
report looking at the overall picture of
where China stands,” said Mackay, senior
adviser at Vital Strategies, a global health
organization. “The reality is, it’s falling
behind.”
Mackay blamed behind-the-scenes
lobbying by China’s state-owned tobacco
monopoly for impeding efforts to toughen
tobacco policies. Government agencies and
research institutes in China, Canada, and
the United States funded the study.
die of cigarettes. ... When you have cheap
cigarettes, people will smoke them.”
In line with global trends, smoking rates
among Chinese have fallen slowly over the
past 25 years, by about 1.0 percent annu-
ally among men and 2.6 percent among
women, according to a separate study
published in April in the medical journal
The Lancet.
Yet because of China’s population
growth — 1.37 billion people at last count
— the actual number of smokers has
continued to increase. Rising prosperity
means cigarettes have become more
Hong Kong “shoebox,” “coffin” homes a challenge for new leader
By Kelvin Chan
The Associated Press
ONG KONG — Li Suet-wen’s dream home would
have a bedroom and living room where her two
children could play and study. The reality is a
one-room “shoebox” cubicle, one of five partitioned out of a
small apartment in an aging walkup in a working-class
Hong Kong neighborhood.
Into the 120-square-foot room are crammed a bunk bed,
small couch, fridge, washing machine, and tiny table. On
one side of the door is a combined toilet and shower stall,
on the other a narrow counter with a hotplate and sink.
Clothes drying overhead dim light from a bare fluorescent
tube. It feels like a storage unit, not a home.
Li’s six-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter often
ask, “Why do we always have to live in such small flats?
Why can’t we live in a bigger place?” Li said.
“I say it’s because mommy doesn’t have any money,”
said Li, a single mom whose HK$4,500 ($580) per month
in rent and utilities eats up almost half the HK$10,000
($1,290) she earns at a bakery decorating cakes.
Housing costs are among the wealthy Asian financial
center’s biggest problems.
Some 200,000 of Hong Kong’s 7.3 million residents live
in “subdivided units.” That’s up 18 percent from four years
ago and includes 35,500 children age 15 and younger,
government figures show. The figure doesn’t include
many thousands more living in other “inadequate
housing,” such as rooftop shacks, metal cages resembling
rabbit hutches, and “coffin homes” made of stacked
wooden bunks.
It’s a universe away from the lifestyles enjoyed by the
rich living in lavish mountaintop mansions and luxury
penthouses, or even those with middle-class accom-
modation in the former British colony.
Hong Kong regularly tops global property price surveys.
Rents and home prices have steadily risen and are now at
or near all-time highs.
H
The U.S.-based consultancy Demographia has ranked it
the world’s least affordable housing market for seven
straight years, beating Sydney, Vancouver, and 400 other
cities. Median house prices are 19 times the median
income.
Beijing-backed Carrie Lam, who was chosen in March
to be Hong Kong’s next chief executive, has vowed to
tackle the housing crisis she is inheriting from her
predecessor, Leung Chun-ying.
Lam says that after she takes office in July she will help
middle-class families afford starter homes and expand the
amount of land the government makes available for
development.
“As everyone knows, for some time housing has been a
troubling problem for Hong Kong,” she said in her victory
speech. “I have pledged to assist Hong Kongers to attain
home ownership and improve their living conditions. To
do so, we need more usable land. The key is to reach a
consensus on how to increase the supply.”
Prices have soared despite multiple rounds of
government cooling measures, as money floods in from
mainland China. Widening inequality helped drive mass
pro-democracy protests in 2014. Young people despair of
ever owning homes of their own. They lack space even to
have sex, one activist lawmaker said last fall, using a
coarse Cantonese slang term that caused a stir.
“If we cannot solve the housing problem, there will be
more social problems,” said Sze Lai-shan, an organizer
with social-welfare group Society for Community
Organization. “Social tensions will increase and people
are (going to be) getting more annoyed with the
government’s policies.”
Li says her children bicker nonstop.
“They fight over this and fight over that. If there’s a day
off (from school), the two of them will argue,” she said.
“The bigger they get, the more crowded it gets. Sometimes
there’s not even any space to step,” she said. “They don’t
even have space to do their homework.”
Public housing is the best hope for most living on
modest incomes. High-rise public housing estates house
about 30 percent of Hong Kong’s 7 million people. If homes
bought with government subsidies are included, the
number rises to nearly half.
Li applied two years ago, but with 282,300 people on the
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TOKYO (AP) — Japan is building its own GPS in hopes
of reducing location errors for drivers, drone operators,
and other users.
A rocket launched from southern Japan transported a
satellite that will form part of a Japanese GPS.
An initial satellite was launched in 2010, and the Japan
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spring to complete the “Michibiki” system. Michibiki is
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Japan currently relies on an American GPS. Having its
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