China's 'tobacco town' thrives

Visitors mill around a bright red hilltop pagoda in southwestern China, gazing down at a sprawling cigarette factory whose deadly output has put an otherwise unremarkable city on the map.

- AGATHA CANTRILL MATTHEW WALSH

China is home to a third of the world's smokers and tobacco-related diseases are a major cause of death in the country — a trend likely to worsen as its population rapidly ages.

Beijing hopes to dramatically reduce that by the end of the decade, but even the government machine is struggling to achieve that as it clashes with a powerful state tobacco monopoly and local economies reliant on the crop.

That contradiction smoulders in Yuxi, Yunnan province, whose nascent tourism businesses and local farmers thrive on its history of cigarette production.

A mostly agricultural area where incomes lag behind the national average, the city has firmly hitched its fortunes to tobacco, which accounted for almost a third of its gross domestic product in the first quarter of last year, according to official figures.

That income helps “pay for our children's schooling or to build a house”, farmer Li told AFP as her husband ploughed furrows in a hilltop field.

She said her family can earn up to 60,000 yuan ($8,300, about 269,500 baht) annually from the tobacco harvest, far exceeding other crops with more variable prices.

Tobacco also brings tourists to Yuxi — local firm Hongta, or “red tower” is one of China's most prominent cigarette brands.