Heart disease is killing more than 700,000 people a year in mainland China - the second-highest death rate in the world - and it has a higher rate of male smokers than all but a handful of countries.
Only India, with 1.53 million deaths, saw more lives lost to heart disease than the mainland in 2002, the last year for which global figures are available, according to the WHO Atlas of Heart Disease and Stroke. Russia ranked third with 675,000 deaths.
The atlas, aimed at increasing governments' awareness of what it calls a global heart disease epidemic, identifies the key risk factors as smoking, high blood pressure, inactivity, high cholesterol levels and diabetes.
Although only 3.6 per cent of mainland women are smokers, 58.9 per cent of men smoke.
The mainland also has surprisingly high cholesterol levels among women aged 30 and above, according to the book - equivalent to Germany, Australia and Sweden and higher than Britain, the United States and Russia, although readings were taken only from city-dwellers.
Obesity levels are lower than in other countries, falling into a third tier behind the US and Canada at the top end and European countries, Russia and Australia on the second tier. The country ranks highly for physical activity.
