Fuming patrons foil Beijing's bid to ban smoking in restaurants

GEOFFREY YORK
Globe and Mail

BEIJING — If you ask for a non-smoking table at the Cheerful Fish Town restaurant in Beijing, you'll be led to a tiny room upstairs at the back.

Of the 200 tables at the popular Sichuan-style eatery, only six are reserved for non-smokers. "This room is mostly for pregnant women or children," explains the service manager, Xu Juan. "We don't get many requests for it."

Most restaurants in the Chinese capital, in fact, have never bothered to provide a non-smoking section. And even now, with ambitious new anti-smoking rules scheduled to take effect in less than two weeks, most restaurants are simply ignoring the issue.

"We have so many smokers," Ms. Xu says. "Whenever they are discussing business, most of them smoke. It's not realistic to ban smoking here. Customers are our god. We can't force them to stop smoking when they're having a meal here."

Even in an Olympic year, when China has promised a smoke-free Games, the Beijing government has been forced to abandon its plan to prohibit smoking in restaurants, bars and Internet cafés. With one of the highest smoking rates in the world, Chinese consumers simply would not accept a ban.

The anti-smoking movement, which has swept across most of the world in recent years, has finally collided with its toughest challenge of all: China. The world's most populous country is also the world's biggest producer of cigarettes, the world's biggest market for cigarettes and the world's biggest paradise for smokers.

China is home to about 350 million smokers - a third of all smokers on the planet - and they puff almost two trillion cigarettes annually. About two-thirds of all Chinese men are regular smokers and they enjoy low prices, as little as eight cents a pack, from China's state-owned tobacco companies.

Recent studies estimate that 540 million Chinese are harmed by second-hand smoke and more than one million Chinese people die annually from smoking-related illnesses. Yet cigarettes in China remain among the cheapest in the world. Many people are unaware of the health risks and the anti-smoking movement is still struggling for recognition.

Using the Beijing Olympics as the rationale, the city government announced this year that it will ban smoking in government offices, schools, hospitals and sports venues by May 1. It also announced a smoking ban in most sections of restaurants, bars and Internet cafés, with an expectation that about 70 per cent of restaurant space would be designated for non-smokers. Other cities across China were preparing to follow Beijing's example.

But last week, after heavy resistance from restaurant owners, Beijing surrendered to the pressure and gave up the plan.

"It is difficult for us to control smoking in restaurants," city official Zhang Peili told the China Daily newspaper. "It's just part of the culture. ... There is a Chinese saying that tobacco and alcohol always go together."

Voluntary efforts to control smoking have been equally futile. In January, officials wrote to 30,000 restaurants in Beijing, asking them to adopt a voluntary ban on smoking, but few accepted the suggestion.

Gao Hailing, a waitress at a seafood hot-pot restaurant in Beijing, says her restaurant has no plans to create a non-smoking section. She says she has never asked a customer to stop smoking and she can't imagine how she could do that.

"I think we have to respect the habits of our smoking customers," she said in an interview. "They are the majority, after all. If we tried to stop them, they might feel very angry. And there are so many smokers in our restaurant and we are too busy to persuade everyone to stop smoking."

Zhang Li, a 55-year-old smoker, says he would be strongly opposed to a smoking ban in restaurants. "Where would we eat?" he asks. "Where would we invite our business clients? Where would we meet our friends for drinks?"

But awareness of the health risks is growing and a handful of restaurants are launching a non-smoking policy or are planning to do so. One restaurant said its revenue dipped by 8 per cent when the ban was introduced, and then recovered.

"It's very annoying to have second-hand smoke in the restaurants," said Jin Yan, a 25-year-old woman in Beijing. "I hope the government enforces the new rules seriously. If there's no section for non-smokers, it's unfair to us. People need to be educated about this."

Despite the decision to exempt restaurants and bars from the smoking ban, health advocates are praising Beijing for prohibiting smoking in other public places. "It is a brave move to ban smoking in government offices," said Jiang Yuan, deputy director of China's national tobacco-control office.