Average tar content per cigarette was reduced to 13.5 mg with the rate of quality cigarettes reaching 99.4 percent, said Xing Wanli, spokesman with the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) Friday.

Xing said at a press conference on the operation of the tobacco industry in the first six months of 2004 that the reduction in tar content resulted from technological innovation, and the great advances in both theory and critical technical research of Chinese cigarettes.

"Great emphases have also been attached to the inspection and check of cigarette products," acknowledged Xing.

According to China's commitment to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Chinese government will reduce the average tar content in each cigarette to 12 mg.

On July 1, the STMA announced an order banning the production of cigarettes with the tar content higher than 15 mg.

China has decided the low tar containing flue-cured cigarettes as its main course of development, Xing said, noting that the restriction on tar content will be further lowered.

For a long time, 300 million Chinese cigarette smokers were used to the flue-cured cigarettes with high tar content and a strong flavor. How to reduce the cigarette tar content while preserving satisfactory taste poses a challenge confronting all cigarette producers.

According to Xing, the number of cigarette producers have been reduced from previous 185 to some 80 while the brands were down to 370.

China will further accelerate its integration of tobacco enterprises with an aim to keep the number of enterprises to around 50 in three or five years time and reduce the brands to around 100, he said.

Xing also announced that the Chinese tobacco industry realized a total pre-tax profit of more than 100 billion yuan (12 billion US dollars) and a tax of 71.5 billion yuan.