Working at a state-run hotel in China’s Sichuan province in the 1990s, Wu Luorong recalls cigarette smoke filling the lobby, restaurants and corridors. “We couldn’t say anything even if we didn’t feel happy with people smoking in the office,” she says.
Now a hospital administrator, Wu, 49, says things have changed. “There is a smoking area for staff and patients’ families. Especially in the respiratory department, we tell smokers to go there,” she says.
China is home to some 300m smokers, more than any other country; about half of men are regular smokers. However, there is a lack of national legislation to ban smoking in workplaces. The World Health Organization estimates that a complete nationwide ban on smoking in the country’s workplaces would reduce prevalence of smoking among Chinese men by 13m, averting 6m premature deaths.