Indoor air in China...better, but still not smoke-free

The high rate of cigarette smoking in mainland China has been one of its major downsides for the ~23 years I’ve been around. And the progress on this has been very slow. I've heard theories about this having to do with the tax revenue generated by the State Tobacco Monopoly, but don't follow the policy area closely enough to know if this is true.

One area where things have actually improved is - in my experience - the rates of indoor smoking. Two decades ago, people smoked pretty much anywhere except for on airplanes...perhaps they believed it would crash the plane. Over the intervening years though, indoor spaces have slowly but surely became increasingly smoke-free. I say increasingly because it wasn't like one day there was smoking, a law was passed and the next day the same place was magically or via heavy penalities and strict enforcement smoke-free. But instead, the indoor places it was socially unacceptable to smoke slowly increased. And I don't mean on a discrete venue-by-venue basis - often this process was noticeable even within the same venue.

At the beginning, everyone would walk into the venue smoking and not think twice. Then at some point, some portion of the people that walked in smoking would think after a few steps "hey maybe I shouldn't be smoking here" and then put out their cigarette. It wasn't that everyone did this, just that the proportion of people doing this slowly and organically increased. Sometimes this was even added aided by signs, or occasionally, a staff member with patience of steel suggesting that perhaps not smoking in the venue might be appreciated.

While this first behavior was slowly spreading, a new behavior would organically emerge where these same people started thinking "hey, maybe I should just stop smoking BEFORE I enter the venue" or "hey, if I'm going to smoke, maybe is should do it only in the bathroom or only in the stalls of the bathroom.

Fast forward to today, and in certain areas of mainland China, I'm impressed by how much less frequently I encounter indoor smoking EVEN IN THE MEN'S BATHROOM. Nicer areas in cities like Zhuhai and Shanghai are particularly impressive. That said it doesn't seem to be strictly tied to economic development or city tier level as some top tier cities like Shenzhen, are decidedly behind their counterparts when it comes to indoor smoking.