China has a large base of smokers, so it has always been a hot target of Chinese and foreign e-cigarette companies.
Number of consumers of e-cigarettes in 2018 accounting for 0.9% of total population, about 12.6 million
According to Bloomberg intelligence, China currently accounts for 27.8% of the total number of smokers in Asia (about 389 million in terms of population of 1.4 billion), second only to Indonesia (36.4%).
According to a recent report, China’s e-cigarette consumption population reached 7.4 million people in 2017.Meanwhile, it has become the world’s largest producer (accounting for 95% of the world’s e-cigarette products) and exporter (accounting for 90% of the world’s e-cigarette products).
In May 2019, according to the survey data released by China Center for disease prevention and control, in 2018, the number of people using e-cigarettes accounted for about 0.9% (about 12.6 million in terms of China’s population of 1.4 billion), an increase of 0.4% compared with 2015 (0.5%).
2019: China 15 year old and above
About 10 million people consume electronic cigarettes
In addition, it is worth noting that the data of China Center for disease prevention and control in May 2019 shows that the number of consumers of electronic cigarettes aged 15 and above in China is about 10 million. 45.4% of them obtained e-cigarettes through the Internet.
According to the survey report, in 2018, 26.6% of Chinese 15-year-olds and above used traditional tobacco products, down 1.1% from 27.7% in 2015.
According to the plan issued by the State Council in July, it is expected that in 2022, the number of smokers aged 15 and over in China will drop to 24.5% and 20% in 2030.
According to incomplete statistics of EC E-Cigarette World, 37 e-cigarette industry investment cases were listed in the first half of 2019. According to the disclosed investment statistics, the total investment is at least over 1 billion yuan.
Although the domestic e-cigarette entrepreneurship enthusiasm is getting more and more intense, but the national and local provinces and cities on e-cigarette regulatory provisions and regulations are not perfect.
At present, Shenzhen (officially implemented on October 1, 2019) and Hangzhou (implemented on January 1, 2019) are the only two provinces and cities in China that have relevant regulations on electronic cigarettes.
Now the only thing we can do is wait for the release of the first national electronic cigarette standard.
On November 1, in order to further protect minors from e-cigarettes and strengthen the regulation of e-cigarettes market, recently, the State Tobacco Monopoly Bureau and the State Administration of Market Supervision and Administration jointly issued the circular on further protecting minors from e-cigarettes (Circular No. 1, 2019 of the state tobacco and grass Monopoly Bureau and the State Administration of Market Supervision and Administration), hereinafter referred to as the circular.
The notice requires that all kinds of market entities shall not sell e-cigarettes to minors; urge e-cigarette production and sales enterprises or individuals to close e-cigarette Internet sales websites or clients in time, e-commerce platforms to close e-cigarette stores in time and take e-cigarette products off the shelves in time, and e-cigarette production and sales enterprises or individuals to withdraw e-cigarette advertisements published through the Internet.
After the release of the circular, the supervision of e-cigarettes has been significantly strengthened. Lu Jie, head of the Monopoly Supervision and Management Department of the State Tobacco Monopoly Bureau, said in an interview with CCTV finance and economics that at present, Beijing, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other provinces and cities have interviewed e-commerce platforms and related e-cigarette network sales channels.
In addition to offline efforts, the regulatory authorities have also strengthened supervision of online (Internet sales channels). On the afternoon of November 5, in Beijing, the regulatory authorities interviewed nine Internet platform enterprises registered in Beijing. Beijing municipal regulatory authorities put forward specific requirements for different enterprises: for example, in search engines, in addition to clearing and blocking keyword searches involving e-cigarettes, they also need to clean up the links of e-cigarettes sales websites under natural search results.
As of the publication, we search found that at present, the e-cigarette search interface of e-commerce platforms such as Jingdong, Suning, Jumei Youpin and Pinduoduo shows “no search results yet.” It is worth noting that on November 7, Taobao and Tmall announced that they had “taken off the electronic cigarette products from now on”, but they still found electronic cigarette related products when using keywords such as “electronic c” and “cigarette”. Actually, no seller and platform want to put e-cigarette off-shelf but they have no other choice.
