Congratulations Big Tobacco, you absolute bastards. There are at least 15 million Chinese children addicted to nicotine and another 25 million who say they have tried it.
This, to the evildoers in multinational Tobacco firms, just means success in an emerging market.
As we know, cigarette companies need to find young 'customers' in developing countries for a number of reasons:
1) Customer loyalty is excellent because their product is addictive so getting kids hooked early is a smart move. You might get 50 years custom from a 13 year old.
2) The problem for tobacco companies is that their customers tend to die prematurely. This means they need to look at the 13-18 year old market to replace the fall-off in the 70-75 year demographic.
3) In the so-called developed world, smoking is going out of fashion. Americans are smoking less and less, and Europeans are banning cigarettes in public places. These have to be replaced with Asians and Africans.
4) Tobacco companies are bastards.
According to the China Daily, nearly one third of Chinese children have tried a cigarette, with two thirds of those having smoked their first full cigarette by the age of 13.
Ahead of the Olympics, China has banned smoking in hotels, taxis and restaurants but don't count on the government to enforce this too rigidly.
Most teenagers have ready access to cheap cigarettes despite a supposed ban on selling to minors. The reasons were spelled out with stunning frankness by Zhang Baozhen, deputy director of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration:
"Smoking harms health but a curb on smoking would upset social stability."
And in China, social stability is king.
Curbs will be phased in over the next three decades, which is "long enough for tobacco firms to shift to new ventures and help sustain the country's tax earnings".
So Big Tobacco has 30 years to diversify its business. Maybe they could get into making cluster bombs or land mines.
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