One in three middle-aged men now living in China will be dead of a tobacco-related disease by 2030, a new study predicts.

Bloomberg News reported April 25 that the study from the International Agency for Research on Cancer compared the smoking habits of Chinese men to those of American males in the 1950s. By 1990, 33 percent of American men ages 35-69 had died of smoking-related causes, researchers said.

There are currently 350 million smokers in China, and a million Chinese die each year from smoking-related illnesses. Tobacco sales contribute $40 billion annually to the Chinese economy, and the China National Tobacco Corp. made 2 trillion cigarettes last year alone.

But tobacco-related illnesses cost the nation $5 billion in healthcare expenditures annually. A half-million cases of lung cancer are reported each year among Chinese men, plus another 200,000 cases among women.