CRI听力:Beijing Steps up Inspection as Toughest Smoking Ban Starts

The smoking ban prohibits smoking in all indoor public places, workplaces, and on public transportation.

Municipal health authorities say supervision will focus on government institutions, schools and kindergartens, medical institutions, restaurants, and entertainment venues that are subject to China's tobacco-control regulations.

According to the ban, violators will face fines of up to 200 yuan or about 32 U.S. dollars, a twenty-fold increase from the current 10 yuan penalty.

Fang Laiying, head of the city's health department, says handing out fines is not the goal of the regulation.

"The penalties are not our aim. More importantly, by implementing the smoking ban we want to raise the public awareness of the harm of tobacco to people's health, so that we can enhance society and people's health."

The latest smoking ban in the capital comes after the country raised the consumption tax on cigarettes in May, in a bid to control the number of smokers.

Yang Gonghuan with the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control says more effort is needed, especially from the tobacco industry.

"Currently, we cannot see any warning image on tobacco packages in our country. For many years, we have had only two warning sentences on the package with small words saying 'smoking is harmful to your health'. This is because the tobacco industry does not want smokers to see alert images and quit smoking, thus affecting sales. So this is an obvious hindrance to the anti-smoking campaign from the tobacco industry."

As a common practice in tobacco control, many countries, including the UK, Thailand and the US have stringent regulations on the package of cigarette, with often graphic images on the packages warning people smoking is harmful.

Experts say such a measure is effective in containing the number of smoker, especially among the younger generation.

Xu Guihua, the vice-president of the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control has also appealed for tougher regulations on smoking ads.

"The tobacco ads aim to attract young people and are very harmful. We must appeal for tough ban on tobacco ads."

China is facing an increasing number of young smokers.

The latest statistics show that there are 15 million young smokers in China, accounting for 7 percent of all the country's young people.

For CRI, this is Wang Wei.