School students in Lianyuan, Hunan province advocate non-smoking lifestyle. The characters read‘refuse smoking, cherish life'. [Photo by Zhang Yang/For China Daily]

Starting young

About 52.7 percent of Chinese smokers aged 20 to 34 started their daily habit before the age of 20, according to WHO figures.

Zhang Longfei, a 27-year-old Beijing resident, is a heavy smoker. He smokes about 30 cigarettes a day.

Zhang picked up the habit during college years, influenced by the students around him.

He has attempted to quit smoking several times, and failed.

"It is difficult to quit smoking when all people around you smoke," Zhang says.

"You cannot become integrated into the circles of people you want to get close with if you don't smoke or drink with them."

However, he says, deep in his heart he knows the real reason he failed was he was not determined enough.

"I didn't try hard enough," he says.

The findings of the 2014 China Youth Tobacco Survey, which was released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in May, found that among students aged 13 to 15 in 1,020 schools in 31 provinces, 9.4 million have smoked.

And about 11.2 percent of boys, 2.2 percent of girls, and 6.9 percent overall currently use tobacco.

Zheng Xinye, an economics professor with the School of Economics at Renmin University of China, says that the China National Tobacco Corporation, a State-owned company with a virtual monopoly over tobacco products, is able to manipulate the prices and sell low-priced tobacco products to teenagers and young people even though they have low purchasing ability.

Once they get addicted, they will be willing to spend large sums of money on tobacco products later in life, when they are able to pay, Zheng said.

Heavy taxation, which leads to high tobacco product retail price, is recommended by the WHO as one of the most effective measures for reducing tobacco consumption. However, for the most popular brands in China the taxation is around 40 percent, much lower than WHO's recommended minimum of 70 percent.