China has a major health crisis with 365 million smokers, but one state-run Chinese company doesn't mind that number at all.

China National Tobacco Corp. has a monopoly in the China market enabling it to produce more than one-third of the world's cigarettes including more than 40 percent of all tobacco sold worldwide.

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The company made 2.5 trillion cigarettes last year dwarfing second-largest competitor, Philip Morris International, which manufactured 880 billion.

To put the massive size of China National Tobacco in even more perspective, this company makes more smokes than the next five largest tobacco companies in the world combined. Although Marlboro is the most popular cigarette in the world, due to China National Tobacco's monopoly in the nation with the most smokers, it sells seven of the top 10 global brands.

Red Pagoda Mountain and Double Happiness are the company's top sellers. It sells 43 of every 100 cigarettes smoked worldwide, according to Euromonitor International. Yet, few outside China, smokers or not, have heard of any of the brands. Having no competition inside China, however, means international brand recognition, or lack thereof, doesn't matter all that much.

Figures related to China National Tobacco are throat-numbing. It manufactures more than 160 separate brands. It has 100 factories across the country and controls 98 percent of the national market. It accounts for 7 percent of annual state revenue. Not only that, but it pays another $16 billion in industry tax charges.

It employs 500,000 people with nearly 20 million people receiving some income from tobacco production and sales, including 1.3 million family farming households and five million retail workers. Elementary school entrances at facilities supported by China National Tobacco feature slogan signs reading, "Genius comes from hard work. Tobacco helps you become talented."

Long story short, even as China's state council considers legislation to ban tobacco advertising and promotion while health concerns have become front-burning topics, China National Tobacco keeps smoking away.

This contradictory relationship is made even more poignant by World Health Organization figures putting lung cancer and tobacco-related illness as among the leading causes of death in China with two million deaths resulting from tobacco use expected in the next 15 years and 600,000 people dying each year from exposure to secondhand smoke.

WHO says smoking costs China $5 billion a year in health care, reduced labor productivity and other lost societal benefits.

TagsTobacco, Cigarettes, china national tobacco, smoking, marlboro, Philip Morris