China's film and teleplay directors were urged to cut smoking scenes in their works amid fear that too much exposure of smoking would undermine the country's tobacco control efforts.

"Bad guys smoke. Good guys smoke too. In sadness, they smoke. In happiness, they smoke too. When in trouble, they smoke. But when the trouble is fixed, they are still smoking," said political advisor Fang Jiqian.

Fang made the remarks at a group discussion on the sidelines of an annual session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the highest advisory body of the country, and won support from his fellow advisors.

"Nearly 63 percent of the popular home-made teleplays shown in 2004 and 2005 have smoking scenes, each teleplay having 30 smoking scenes on average," Fang said.

"Too much smoking scenes have an adverse impact on the audience, especially youths," he added.

Fang, a professor on public health with Sun Yat-sen University, urged the authorities to take actions to restrict the smoking scenes in movies and teleplays to create a better environment for the health and growth of young people.

He also blamed government departments concerned for the failure to put tobacco and tobacco commercials under strict control.

"The government should completely ban all commercial promotions of tobacco products and expand tobacco ban to more public places to better protect non-smokers," Fang said.

The State Tobacco Monopoly Administration estimates that China has more than 350 million smokers, about 26 percent of the country's total population and a third of the world's smoking population. Each year, about 1 million Chinese die of smoking-related diseases.

Fang said tobacco control is a solemn commitment made by the Chinese government and "it concerns the image of the government".

He criticized insufficient government actions, saying that weak official efforts have led to the rise of both tobacco needs and supply in recent years.

However, Fang seemed to get the cold shoulder from the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration.

"We're fully aware that smoking harms people's health. But we also fear that completely banning smoking would affect social stability," said Zhang Baozhen, deputy chief of the administration at the group discussion.

Zhang did not elaborate how a complete ban of smoking would bring harm to social stability, and said tobacco control is a "long-term task".

"As a member of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, China will improve its efforts in tobacco control," Zhang said.

(Xinhua News Agency March 10, 2007)