China's tabacco expansion: A concern for global public health

Beijing [China], September 2 : The expansion of the Chinese tobacco industry has a negative impact on public health at a much larger, unprecedented scale.
The Chinese government and tobacco conglomerates are trying to expand their tobacco industry globally, aiming for a global monopoly and in this China National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC) plays a primary, US-based publication, Financial Post reported.
CNTC holds the world's biggest market share percentile of 44 per cent of cigarettes sold and consumed globally since 2018, making the company political and financially powerful.
If CNTC is allowed to continue its global spread, unprecedented public health risks might result out of China's imperial expansionism ideology. CNTC is aiming for a global monopoly on tobacco, casting influence on economies of small nations. This would bear China with a lot of politico-economic power, which could in the future result in these countries falling prey to the former's now well-known debt-trap diplomacy.
About one in every three cigarettes smoked in the world is smoked in China. The Chinese have an extensive and relatively historical culture of smoking where 52 per cent of the adult males are smokers, about two-thirds of them starting even before they turn 20. It is an intrinsic part of their socio-cultural fabric, where gifting cigarettes to friends and even strangers is considered polite.
As per the reports presented by Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) in 2017, CNTC produces 2.4 trillion cigarettes yearly, which is 43 per cent of global output. The company is a huge organization that has a lot of agency power. The powers can be exhibited in three ways, political power; which allows them direct participation in tobacco policy-related discussion, then financial power, and lastly, ideation power; which helps CNTC to normalize the consumption of tobacco use and propagate corporate social responsibility, according to Financial Post.
Researchers Kelly Lee, Jennifer Fang, and Nidhi Sejpal, in the OCCRP report, have pointed out CNTC's 'quite noteworthy' aggressive overseas expansion.
CNTC is currently exporting tobacco products to 125 countries as per the UN's Com-trade database. It has set up manufacturing factories in Romania, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Middle East, Africa and South America. They source their raw tobacco from Zimbabwe and Brazil. And as per CGTN and Global Times reports, the CNTC has also signed an agreement with Cuba to boost cigar sales. As per reports, when China announced the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) -- CNTC declared publicly to participate in their country's best efforts on global dominance. The company, quite clearly, is exploring all possible avenues to extend its global agendas.
CNTC's subsidiary company is China Tobacco International, which has filed for a Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO). The listing would raise 100 million dollars for the unit to purchase tobacco leaves from Brazil to sell them to Chinese manufacturers. The IPO is showcasing China's yet another way of the international expansion strategy.
The IPO played a major key role in CNTC's further expansion with little help from Hong Kong (an international arm of CNTC). In 2008, CNTC redefined its operations described as, the 'designated offshore platform of China Tobacco International of capital markets and operations and international business expansion.
According to the publication citing OCCRP's investigative report, their journalists have concluded the findings of a truck carrying 12.5 million cigarettes smuggled from Europe to Ukraine. The cigarettes found were 'duty-free sale only' with stamps that were not in Ukrainian. OCCRP cited, that CNTC cigarettes are part of a tobacco trafficking ring that moves large consignments from Romania, Belarus, and the UAE into Ukraine to further smuggle them into European Union countries.
They further found evidence of CNTC's illegal tobacco smuggling in Latin America. CNTC, by all means, expanding by illegal tobacco trading to make profits and smuggle illicit Chinese cigarettes is worrisome.
Tobacco kills more than 8 million people annually across the globe, about 7 million of them being active smokers. An even bigger problem is the high spread of tobacco smokers across middle and low-income countries, amounting to 80 per cent of the total tobacco smokers.