Proposal to Separate China’s Tobacco Industry and Government: Turn the State Tobacco Monopoly Admini

Title: Proposal to Separate China’s Tobacco Industry and Government: Turn the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration into the National Tobacco Control Bureau

Reporter: Wang Kaiguang, Legal Daily

The well-known domestic anti-smoking organization, the New Exploration Health Development Research Center, has submitted a smoking control proposal (hereinafter referred to as the "proposal") to the National People's Congress representatives and members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, pointing out that the integration of government and enterprise in the tobacco industry has become the biggest obstacle to tobacco control in China. Therefore, it is recommended that the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration and China National Tobacco Corporation quickly implement a separation of government and enterprise, transforming the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration into the National Tobacco Control Bureau.

The New Exploration Health Development Research Center believes that from 1994 to 2013, almost all state-owned enterprises achieved a separation of government and enterprise. The tobacco enterprise is the last remaining single commodity production and sales institution that has not completed the separation after the Ministry of Railways did so.

The current tobacco monopoly system in China is a monopoly system that integrates the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration and China National Tobacco Corporation.

Under this system, the government department, as the regulator of the tobacco industry, not only cannot restrain its own enterprise behavior but also uses state power to create a larger development space for tobacco enterprises, allowing them to wield administrative power and substantial financial resources, thereby increasing tobacco production and sales, which severely obstructs China's tobacco control commitments and has a significant negative impact on tobacco control in China.

"The proposal for the separation of government and enterprise in the tobacco industry has been raised many times. As the administrative management department of the tobacco industry, the Tobacco Monopoly Administration has always evaded and delayed the proposal with reasons such as conditions not being met, timing not being ripe, and impacts on tax revenue and employment," the proposal states.

The New Exploration Health Development Research Center also points out that the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, as a member of the tobacco control commitment leadership group, not only fails to seriously fulfill its tobacco control commitment responsibilities but also obstructs the implementation of WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control measures in various ways, such as creating the "low tar, low harm" myth of Chinese cigarettes; hindering the adoption of the most effective graphic health warnings on tobacco product packaging; and obstructing legislation to comprehensively ban tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship, which seriously violates the spirit of Article 5.3 of the Convention, making it clearly unfeasible to have representatives of tobacco interests formulate and implement tobacco control plans.

In addition, the integration of government and enterprise breeds corruption. Many high-profit tax enterprises often have high levels of corruption, and numerous corruption cases can be seen annually in tobacco enterprises. Under the government-enterprise integration system, there may be even more serious corruption that has not been exposed. The biggest beneficiaries of the government-enterprise integration are the vested interests themselves, those who are unwilling to promote reform.

Therefore, the New Exploration Health Development Research Center recommends that the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration and China National Tobacco Corporation quickly implement a separation of government and enterprise, separating administrative management functions from tobacco production and operation management functions, and strictly regulating their respective responsibilities; transforming the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration into the National Tobacco Control Bureau to protect public health, control tobacco harm, supervise the implementation of the Convention, and regulate the behavior of tobacco enterprises, thereby promoting China's tobacco control commitment process; before the establishment of the new system, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration should withdraw from the national inter-ministerial coordination group for commitment implementation and should not participate in the formulation of tobacco control commitment policies.