China has a smoking problem, and Professor Liming Li from Beijing’s Peking University doesn’t pull his punches, ­saying: “About two-thirds of young Chinese men become ­smokers, and most start before they are 20. Unless they stop, about half of them will ­eventually be killed by their habit.”

Zhengming Chen, a professor of epidemiology at Oxford University, adds: “About 40% of the world’s tobacco is consumed by people in China, almost exclusively by men. A substantial increase in cigarette prices and effective package warnings could save tens of millions of lives.”

This is because smoking increases the risks of 56 diseases, and kills more than one million adults in China each year from 22 different causes, according to new research from Oxford Population Health, UK, Peking University, and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, both in Beijing.

Smoking also increases the risk of developing a wide range of conditions that aren’t generally fatal, such as asthma, a peptic ulcer, cataracts, diabetes and other metabolic diseases.

The study included over 512,000 adults recruited during 2004-08 from 10 urban and rural areas across China. They were then followed for 11 years.

A third of these people were smokers but less than 3% were women.

At least 48,800 participants died and around 1.14 million new diseases occurred. The results were pretty scary: smokers had a higher risk of 22 potential causes of death, of which 17 affected men and nine affected women. They risked developing 56 diseases (50 for men and 24 for women). Smokers also had a 10% higher risk of ­developing any disease, ranging from a 6% higher risk of diabetes to 216% for throat cancer.

They also had more frequent and longer stays in hospital.

Those in towns tended to start smoking at a younger age and smoked more than those in rural areas and were at higher risk of dying, especially if they started smoking before 18.

Smokers of either sex were likely to die three and a half years earlier and 40% of male deaths could be attributed to smoking.

Professor Chen Wang, a senior author from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, said: “Without rapid, committed and widespread action to reduce smoking levels in China, the country will face an ­enormous health and economic burden of premature deaths and disease morbidity due to smoking.”