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Trends and Buzz
Smoking and social stabilityPosted by Jeremy Goldkorn, March 9, 2007 7:05 PM
China's annual convening of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference is usually described as "the meeting of China's parliament" in the Western media and as the "Two Meetings" (两会) in the Chinese media.
The event is a source of frustration for journalists who have to cover it, because it's essentially a rubber stamp affair where nothing exciting happens. It's also a bit a bore for the delegates who attend the meetings, as illustrated by the photo on the left of sleeping NPC delegates. Which is why the most interesting reporting to come out of the annual snoozefest is usually of the 'weird news' variety. Such as this Reuters story: Smoking curb could "upset China stability" There's an opinion piece in response to this on Sina.com (in Chinese), in which the author says that the talk of threatening social stability is nonsense, because it was not an outright ban being proposed, but rather curbs on availability of cigarettes and public places where they may be smoked. UPDATE:As pointed out in the comments, the number quoted above for tax revenues from cigarettes in China — 80 billion yuan ($10.33 billion) per day — seems highly improbable. |
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Comments on Smoking and social stability
love the photo.
China's leaders, hard at work.
USD 10.3 billion per day in tax?
Highly doubt that figure somehow...
The figures I have seen for smokers in China are that about a quarter of the population smoke, i.e. over 300 million people. If each othem contributes half a yuan a day in taxes (I just made that number up), then we have 150 million yuan a day in tobacco tax revenues. That's around USD 18 million...
I think Bobby is right, the number cannot be that high.
Here is an old source:
Cigarette taxation in China
"For instance, in 1992, the total government tax revenue was Y329.7 ($54.9) billion; the cigarette tax revenue that same year was Y31.0 ($5.2) billion. Thus, cigarette taxes raised 9.4% of total government revenues. Clearly this tax represents a major source of government revenue."
In 1992, it was USD 5.2 billion for the whole year. That does make the 10.3 billion per day figure seem unlikely. Either the official is confused or Reuters has not yet figured out how to translate 千万 into English. 10.3 million dollars a day is perhaps what they meant?
USD 10.3 billion per day is definitely too high.
In 2005, the total government tax revenue of tobacco industry was about RMB 240 billion.
(240 billion/365 days)=0.658 billion per day.
for 1$=7.741RMB,
it's 0.084942 billion
0.084942x1000=>84,942 mio.$
=>about $85 mio per day for 2005
so 金玉米，maybe that's $103,3 mio。 you mean for the 2006.
Liquor taxes were once the US government's largest source of income. But when an income tax was established, it was no longer significant. China will also find some other source of revenue.
Nick Kasoff
It would seem that tobacco industries of every country are trying to come up with novel ways to justify their doings. But then again, it's still the demand that is driving their supply of tobacco products, not unlike the flow of drugs into the US to satisfy the demand.