Yesterday was World No Tobacco Day, but it was very hard to find any genuine effort to use the occasion to discourage smoking on the mainland, the world's largest producer and consumer of tobacco.
One of the most notable initiatives came from the awkwardly named Beijing Patriotic Health Committee, a semi-official organisation promoting clean living. It issued a nationwide open letter urging smokers not to light up and retailers not to sell tobacco products for one hour starting from 5.31pm. The mainland media dutifully played up the announcement and reported that more than 20 other cities had taken up the call.
The measure, however, was ridiculed in the mainland's internet chat rooms.
In a country that sees about a million tobacco-related deaths every year - a quarter of all such deaths worldwide - such a derisory effort says a lot about the mainland's overall attitude towards smoking.
Some might argue that because the mainland's health and medical apparatus is devoting its efforts to containing the spread of swine flu, it does not have the time or resources to mark this year's anniversary seriously. That might be true, but the mainland has never mounted a meaningful campaign to discourage smoking.
This is despite its having signed the World Health Organisation's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2003, which aims to reduce global demand for tobacco products by encouraging developing nations to adopt anti-smoking measures that are now commonplace in developed countries. The mainland ratified the convention in October 2005 and became a full member in 2006.