The study, published this week in the British Medical Journal, tracks the rising death toll from smoking in China, where two-thirds of the men smoke. It confirms that cigarettes are just as harmful to Far Eastern populations as they are in the West.

"Whenever one gets to a new culture or another ethnic group, it has to be proved all over again. There's always a possibility that there are genetic differences and there are different factors involved," said Dr. Michael Thun, head of epidemiology at the American Cancer Society, who was not involved in the study.

China, with nearly 1.4 billion people, is home to 20 percent of the world's population and consumes 30 percent of the world's cigarettes. The nation is the largest producer of cigarettes in the world.

The study tracked deaths from tobacco in Hong Kong, where the population started smoking about 20 years earlier than the people of the mainland.

Researchers said the Hong Kong pattern is seen as foreshadowing that of whole China because the Hong Kong population was able to afford to smoke decades earlier than people on the mainland.

"It may well foreshadow what will happen among men throughout the mainland, and in other developing countries, over the next few decades," said the study, led by Oxford University epidemiologist Sir Richard Peto.

"Two-thirds of all the young men in China, but, as yet, few of the young women, become smokers. Half the smokers who persist will eventually be killed by their habit," said the researcher, whose group is credited with confirming the link between smoking and lung cancer.

(Eastday.com 08/17/2001)