ChinaWatch: Dell Digs Market

Welcome to ChinaWatch, WMB’s digest of news from the country with the world’s second largest economy and our chief rival to global dominance. Our aim is to keep you informed.

Ban On Butts

China, the world's largest tobacco producer and home to 300 million smokers, will impose a national ban on lighting up in hotels, restaurants, shopping malls and other indoor public spaces, according to the Health Ministry.

The new rules, which take effect May 1 and spell out provisions for educating people about the dangers of tobacco, include restrictions on vending machines and on outdoor smoking that affects pedestrians.

But the regulations have considerable loopholes.

They do not cover factories, offices or government workplaces and they lack specific guidelines for penalizing those who violate them. That has prompted shrugs among devoted smokers, many of whom have learned to ignore no-smoking signs in hospital waiting areas, gymnasium locker rooms and lifts.

“Chinese people, including most government officials, are just too in love with their cigarettes to pay attention to such a law,” says Liu Bailing, a 28-year-old bank employee who dined beneath a cloud of smoke at a restaurant.

His complaint was not without reason. In the nearly three years since Beijing required restaurants and bars to provide non-smoking sections, most smokers have continued to puff away just about everywhere.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that a survey of households last year showed that less than a quarter of adults believed smoking caused strokes, heart attacks and lung cancer, and only a quarter believed exposure to smoke caused those illnesses in children.

While acknowledging the challenges of enforcing the new ban, anti-smoking advocates in China hailed it as a first step to weaning the nation off tobacco, which health officials say kills more than 1.2 million Chinese a year.

China has among the world's highest smoking rates, with nearly a third of all adults, 300 million people, lighting up. It is the biggest producer and consumer of tobacco products.

Dell Courts China

Texas-based computer maker Dell Inc. is building another manufacturing center in China.

The new plant in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan, is Dell’s second in China after opening its Xiamen base in the eastern province of Fujian, Chinese officials say.

The manufacturing plant, which was announced by Round Rock-based Dell in September 2010, is expected to produce its first products during the fourth quarter.

The groundbreaking in China comes amid announcements by CEO Michael Dell that the company plans to invest more in its operations in India and it opened a research and development center in Israel.

Dell, the No. 2 computer maker in the world, employs about 14,000 workers in Central Texas.

In September 2010, Dell officials announced plans to expand its plant in China with 500 additional workers and open a second manufacturing plant in Western China.

They say the decision was prompted by the surging business in China, which after the United States is the company’s second-largest market.

Dell’s second Chinese manufacturing plant is expected to employ 3,000 workers. The company also plans to invest more than $100 billion in China during the next 10 years, officials say.

Last year’s announcement about China came one week after Dell disclosed it was completing closure of a manufacturing plant in North Carolina which once employed nearly 1,000 workers.

The company subsequently confirmed the jobs were being outsourced to Mexico and other countries.

ChinaWatch

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