Anti-smoking signs, glimpsed in the haze

A smartly dressed man carried a lit cigarette into the elevator of an upscale apartment building here one recent morning, and something remarkable happened.

A fellow passenger, a middle-aged woman with a pet Maltese tethered to her wrist, waved a hand in front of her face and produced a series of mannered coughs that had the desired effect: The man stepped on the cigarette and muttered an apology.

In a country where one in four people smoke, and where doctors light up in hospital hallways and health ministers puff away during meetings, it was a telling sign that a decade of halfhearted public campaigns against tobacco might finally be gaining traction.

Last May, the municipal government banned cigarettes in schools, railway stations, office buildings and other public places. Chinese athletes are no longer permitted to accept tobacco company sponsorships. Cigarette advertising on billboards will be restricted during the Olympics. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has declared that the games will be "smoke free."

Despite the new laws and proclamations, the impact might elude nonsmoking visitors who arrive in the capital next month. Most restaurants remain shrouded in smoke, the air in clubs and bars can be asphyxiating and a year-old prohibition against lighting up in Beijing taxis has had little effect.

"If I point to the no-smoking sign, the passenger will just laugh and keep smoking," said Hui Guo, a cab driver who does not smoke.

Government officials say that 100,000 inspectors have been dispatched to ticket smoking scofflaws, but the $1.40 fine offers little deterrence, especially to the nouveau riche entrepreneurs who proudly brandish the gold-filtered Chunghua brand, which sell for $10 a pack.

Li Baojun, the manager of a popular restaurant on Ghost Street, explained why he did not dare tell patrons to stop chain-smoking during meals.

"My customers would rather starve than not smoke, and I would go out of business," he said, as a thick pall hung over the diners. "In China, you cannot drink, eat and socialize without a cigarette."

About 350 million of China's 1.3 billion people are regular smokers, more than the entire population of the United States, and 1.2 million people in China die each year from smoking-related causes..

(Unlike cigarettes in much of the world, Chinese brands carry no health warning on labels, although that is scheduled to change in 2011.)

The nation's lukewarm efforts to curb smoking are complicated by the government's control over the tobacco industry, which provides about $31 billion in taxes each year, about 8 percent of the government's revenue.

China produces a third of the world's tobacco, with more than 400 domestic brands offered at Beijing's ubiquitous tobacco shops. During a debate over antismoking measures last year, Zhang Baozhen, a vice director of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, warned that "without cigarettes the country's stability will be affected."