China's film and teleplay directors have been urged to cut smoking scenes in their work.

The call came amid fears that too much glorification of smoking would undermine the country's tobacco-control efforts.

"Bad guys smoke," said political adviser Fang Jiqian. "Good guys smoke, too. In sadness, they smoke. In happiness, they smoke. When in trouble, they smoke. But when the trouble is fixed, they are still smoking."

Fang made the remarks at a group discussion on the sidelines of the annual session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing yesterday, and won support from fellow advisers for his firm non-smoking stand.

"Nearly 63 percent of popular home-made teleplays shown in 2004 and 2005 have smoking scenes, each teleplay having 30 smoking scenes on average," Fang said.

"Too many smoking scenes have an adverse impact on the audience, especially youths."

Fang, a professor on public health with Sun Yat-sen University, urged authorities to take action to restrict smoking scenes in movies and teleplays.

He also blamed relevant government departments for the failure to put tobacco and tobacco commercials under stricter control.

"The government should completely ban all commercial promotions of tobacco products and expand the tobacco ban to more public places to better protect non-smokers," Fang said.

The State Tobacco Monopoly Administration estimates that China has more than 350 million smokers, about 26 percent of the country 's total population and a third of the world's smoking population.

Each year, about one million Chinese die of smoking-related diseases.

Fang said tobacco control should be a solemn commitment by the state.

He received a cool response from the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration.

"We're fully aware that smoking harms people's health, but we also fear that completely banning smoking would affect social stability," said Zhang Baozhen, deputy chief of the administration.

Zhang said tobacco control is a "long-term task."