Although fewer smoking scenes are now seen in China-produced movies and TV dramas, China’s entertainment screens are still far from being tobacco-free, according to Xu Guihao, deputy director of the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control.

The tobacco control association has been conducting annual surveys since 2007, and their 2013 survey of 60 dramatic films and TV shows an improvement compared to previous years.

Like Us on Facebook

Fewer smoking scenes were contained in the 2013 movies and TV shows that were reviewed.

Of the Chinese-produced films shown in 2013, 63 percent had smoking scenes. This figure is 23.4 percent less than that of 2007, according to Xu.

From the 30 movies that were chosen for analysis in the survey, 19 had smoking scenes. These movies had a total of 308 smoking scenes that took 1,257 seconds of playing time.

The average length of the smoking scenes in these movies is 66 seconds60 percent shorter than that in the 2007 survey.

Chinese TV dramas showed better results compared to the movies, according to Xu. Fifty percent of the 30 TV dramas reviewed in the survey did not have any smoking scenes. This shows a big decline compared to that of 2007 when 90 percent of the shows reviewed had smoking scenes.

In 2011, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television released an order to limit the showing of smoking scenes in movies and TV series, but there are some who pay no heed to the order, Xu said.
Yao Hongwen, spokesman of the National Health and Family Planning is calling for some serious effort to change this situation.

According to Yao, smoking scenes have a great effect on adolescents especially if the scenes involve their idols.

China has more than130 adolescents, 15 million of whom are smokers while over 40 million of them have tried to smoke even just once, Yao added.