New Bid to Ban Smoking in Public – Ma Quan

From China Daily:

Thirty national legislators have proposed a ban on smoking in public, but concede imposing such a rule would be hard habit to crack in China, which has an estimated 350 million smokers.

In a motion before the National People’s Congress the legislators claimed as many as 600 million Chinese people are exposed to passive smoke, putting them at risk of getting lung cancer…

At a CPPCC discussion last week, deputy chief of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration Zhang Baozhen said China “needed” the tobacco industry and China’s stability could be “threatened” if the government tried to curb smoking. [Full Text]