There is Big Tobacco and then, in China, there is very, very Big Tobacco. The China National Tobacco Corp is the world’s largest cigarette maker.
According to the Tobacco Atlas, published by the American Cancer Society and World Lung Foundation, CNTC controls 32 per cent of the global cigarette market - almost as much as the No 2 and 3 companies, Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco, combined. Surprisingly, the global public health lobby has come a long way in China.
Judith Mackay, a Hong Kong-based doctor, remembers attending a 1987 meeting about tobacco and its health effects that had to be held in a drab second-tier city rather than Beijing, the capital, because the subject was deemed to be too sensitive. State-owned CNTC has long been a major taxpayer and employer.