The Toronto Globe and Mail reported June 11 that the company, which sells about 1.8 billion cigarettes annually, includes the health claims -- and denials about the link between smoking and lung cancer -- on its website. The site even touts the ability of tobacco to improve women's rights and prevent loneliness and depression.

"Smoking removes your troubles and worries," the website quotes a 37-year-old female magazine editor as saying. "Holding a cigarette is like having a walking stick in your hand, giving you support. Quitting smoking would bring you misery, shortening your life."

Polls have shown that most Chinese believe that smoking has few negative health effects, or may even be good for them. Sixty percent of male Chinese doctors are smokers, too. But new studies predict that smoking will soon cause one of every three premature deaths in China.

U.S. and other foreign tobacco firms are eager to break into the Chinese market, which includes 360 million smokers. The Chinese tobacco monopoly now controls 99 percent of the market, and tobacco taxes alone account for 10 percent of China's tax revenue. But China's membership in the World Trade Organization could open the door to foreign tobacco companies.

Chinese women also are increasingly taking up smoking, a sharp departure from just a decade ago. Cigarettes cost about 30 cents a pack, and prevention and education programs are nearly nonexistent. Children can easily buy cigarettes at stores, despite laws banning sales to those under age 18.

"The magnitude of the problem is overwhelming," said Jean Couture, a Quebec surgeon who works on cancer-education programs in China. "In China today, the economy comes first and everything else is secondary, including health care. You wonder if anyone in the government is conscious of how great the smoking problem is. There's no public-education program. The Chinese antismoking association is very weak and has almost no money. Within 20 years, China could have the majority of all smoking deaths in the world."

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