Tax wheeze worries smokers
- Source: Global Times
- [22:46 February 01 2010]
- Comments
By Zhang Han
When a deranged migrant worker, armed with meat cleavers, was apprehended by police in Guangdong Province recently, the man told them he was on his way to murder his boss.
Why?
The would-be killer, Li Enwang , gave a reason that many smokers in China might find perfectly sane:
"I just don't understand why rich people can drive around in luxury cars while I can't even afford a cigarette," Li reportedly told the Southern Metropolis Daily on Tuesday.
A cigarette will soon be even less affordable to Li and others if Beijing lobbyists succeed in their plan to make the Chinese government raise the price of a nicotine fix.
A proposal for a preliminary 8.4-percent price hike or half a yuan a pack was submitted to the State Council in early November last year. Higher-grade cigarettes would be raised 3 yuan a pack, or 11.5 percent.
Proposed by Hu Angang, a professor at the School of Public Policy & Management at Tsinghua University in Beijing, the proposal sparked criticisms not just from smokers but also from those who characterize the tax as both anti-poor and anti-fun.
"Smoking is harmful to people's health, but as a habit or a hobby everyone is entitled to enjoy it," wrote "xiaoxu" at tianya.cn.
"If the government wants to curb smoking by making cigarettes unaffordable to some people, this is a kind of discrimination against the poor and it's unfair."
Smoking is an effortless occupation on the Chinese mainland. Take downtown Beijing for example, where cigarettes are sold everywhere from the bulk supermarket to the all-night cornershop, from 2.5 yuan a pack of Dafengshou to 8,000 yuan a carton of Limited Edition Huanghelou.
Migrant worker Wang Changwen, 45, is rebuilding the CCTV tower, for which he earns about 2,000 yuan a month.
"For most migrant workers in their 40s who have a family back home like me, we usually buy cheap cigarettes that cost two to five yuan to save some money," Wang said.
His favorite brand is Daqianmen at about 2.5 yuan ($0.36) a pack.
"How much I smoke mostly depends on my mood that day," he said. "If I get frustrated such as when I don't get my salary, I'll probably smoke more than a pack. When I'm having a good day, I only need half a pack.
"Smoking's harmful, but sometimes a cigarette is the only thing that comforts me when I am upset with life in the big city."
An estimated 350 million Chinese smoke and 3 million more take up the habit each year. Twenty-two percent of the world's population is home to a third of its smokers, grows a third of the world's tobacco and manufactures a third of its cigarettes.
The tobacco industry is China's single-biggest taxpayer. The government raised 8.3 percent of its entire financial revenue – 513.1 billion yuan – from tobacco taxes in 2009 according to the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration.
The income does not even come close to the health costs, say the anti-smoking experts. About 1.2 million Chinese die from smoking-related diseases every year.
Lung cancer became the top cancer killer in 2008, according to the Ministry of Health, the number of cases quadrupling over the past 30 years.
Cancer, cardiovascular diseases and respiratory diseases cost the country 223.7 billion yuan annually, according to Li Ling, an economics professor at Peking University.
"Add to that the costs of other diseases and indirect costs such as fire and environmental pollution, the amount goes far beyond the tax revenue generated by the industry," Li told a conference at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
