健康英语新闻:Smoking warnings to change in China

Wu said the tobacco control office has conducted surveys in recent years in which 90 percent of the respondents said graphic warnings would help them come to the grips with the thought that they should quit smoking."But the national tobacco administrator also sells cigarettes and wouldn't do something that would harm its sales," Wu said.

Both Wu and Yang said the Ministry of Health should take a lead in the campaign against smoking and the government should place more of a priority on protecting people's health than on economic interests.

"On the cigarette packaging of more than 40 countries, there are government warning that say things like '85 percent of lung cancer victims smoked'," Wu said.

China, home to more than 300 million smokers, contains the largest population of smokers in the world. Official statistics show that 1.2 million Chinese residents die of smoking-related diseases every year.