From AP, via Washingtonpost.com:
Heart disease, cancer and stroke are now the top killers of middle-aged people in China, fueled by high blood pressure and smoking, which have developed alongside the communist country’s economy, according to one of the largest surveys of its kind.
The research into the major causes of death in adults found that over the past 45 years, China has undergone a huge health transition. Infectious disease has been replaced by the same chronic killers that plague the West.
The full results of the survey have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.