On March 1, Shanghai will start cracking down on smoking in most public places as part of a wider effort to clean up the city before the Expo. Similar to Beijing’s clampdown before the Olympics, this latest ban on smoking will extend to 13 types of public venues, including schools, hospitals, banks, supermarkets, shopping malls and elevators. But will it work?
According to a recent survey by Fudan University, more than 90 percent of Shanghai residents support the smoking ban, and 94 percent believe that a smokefree Expo will improve the city’s image. Still, there is no comprehensive ban on smoking in the workplace, restaurants or bars, where the acts of offering, receiving and lighting a cigarette are important forms of cultural communication.
“Smoking is obviously an important part of Chinese business life,” says Anton Cui, a consultant. “At one meeting with a Chinese firm, my interviewer chain-smoked the entire time.”
“We’re working slowly towards our ultimate goal: to ban smoking totally in public areas,” adds Li Guangyao, deputy director of the Shanghai Health Promotion Committee Office. “We shouldn’t expect people to stop smoking totally after this regulation is launched,” he continues. “We need some time to gradually control people’s smoking behavior.”
Enforcement is also a considerable issue in a country where 25 percent of adults smoke. “I think it’s a good thing, but there are no means to control it at the local level,” says Florian Rebeyrat, a student in Shanghai. “In Beijing last year, nothing was being done.”
Beijing trained upwards of 100,000 staff to take on enforcement roles during the 2008 Olympics, but fined violators as little as ¥20. Hoping to learn from the Beijing’s experience, Shanghai is upping fines to ¥50-200 for individuals and as raising them as high as ¥30,000 for establishments.
Like most of Shanghai, Rebeyrat, a smoker himself, doesn’t think the ban will work. But he’s not concerned about the rules himself. “I’m so used to not smoking in public in France that I don’t do it here anyway,” he says.
■ Jean Yung
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Agreed. the smoking ban in Beijing for Olympics had little effect. People still smoke in the bathroom on our floor of the office building where we are located. They used to do it right in plain view of the "no smoking sign", now they have retreated to the stalls. Result for my lungs is the same.
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Usual scarecrow "anti-something" purely propagandistic campaign. Doubt it will have any effect on smoking - the tobacco industry matters to much to the national economy.