From AFP:
Hypertension plays a part in 2.3 million cardiovascular deaths in China each year, doctors reported on Tuesday, pointing a finger at high levels of salt in the Chinese diet.
Health specialists led by Jiang He, a professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, made the estimate from a nationally representative sample of 170,000 Chinese aged 40 and over.
Extrapolating across the country, 2.3 million cardiovascular deaths in 2005 were related to raised blood pressure, they said.