If anti-tobacco campaigners want a morality story for their cause, they need look no further than 82-year-old Chu Shijian, who last year produced 4,040 tonnes of oranges in a large plantation in the southwest province of Yunnan .
Chu is a famous figure in the history of Chinese tobacco. He became the head of the Yuxi cigarette factory in October 1979 and turned the Hill of the Red Pagoda into one of the most famous brands in China. During his 16 years as head, it earned 99.1 billion yuan (HK$112.9 billion) in taxes and profits for the state, more than any other single firm in the country.
He used the profits to buy state-of-the-art equipment from Japan, Germany and the United States. Visitors were dazzled to see automated machines produce thousands of cigarettes a minute.
He became a household name in Yunnan. In 1994, the government named him one of the '10 great reform figures'. But, as a state employee, he received in salary and bonus a fraction of what he would have as the chief of a factory in the private sector.
Dissatisfied at his income compared to the time he worked and the responsibilities he carried, he supplemented his income by siphoning off US$1.74 million of the firm's large advertising revenue.
In February 1995, an informant sent details of these illegal payments to the procurator. In 1997, a court condemned him to life imprisonment, a sentence reduced to 17 years in 1999. He was 71. Many considered the sentence unjust, a reflection of the distorted and corrupt system of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration.