WHEN China started opening up in 1978, its first economic reforms included raising the prices it paid to farmers for their crops. The decision, not surprisingly, led to bumper harvests. Controls on procurement prices for most farm products were eventually scrapped—but not on tobacco leaves. Only this year, nearly four decades later, will the government at last stop fixing their price.

Even as market reforms swept the countryside under Deng Xiaoping, the government kept its grip on the hugely lucrative tobacco industry. Tobacco companies remained exclusively in state hands. Prices of the leaf were set in order to assure farmers of an income and dissuade them from switching to other cash crops. Local governments wanted to boost tobacco farming, not least because of the taxes it yielded. Centuries-old taxes on every other crop were abolished in 2006, but not those on tobacco. The southern province of Yunnan derives nearly 80% of local revenue from the crop. The cigarette industry stuffs the central government’s coffers too, accounting for over 7% of its revenues.

Soaring demand for tobacco products has helped to keep the system (sort of) working. China’s 5m tobacco farmers now produce more than 3m tonnes of tobacco a year, 43% of the world’s total—more than the combined output of the next nine tobacco-producing countries. China is home to a third of the world’s smokers, most of them men. Thanks to low sales taxes, cigarettes have become more than twice as affordable since 1990.

But even in the tobacco industry, command economies have their weaknesses. Yields per hectare have increased more slowly than for other crops, partly because government incentives have unintentionally spurred tobacco-growing on land unsuited to the leaf. Because sales are assured and prices set, farmers produce too much low-quality tobacco, says Teh-Wei Hu of Berkeley School of Public Health in America. Though Chinese leaves are on average cheaper per kilogram than American and Brazilian varieties, they are also inferior.

In theory, abandoning price controls should encourage large-scale farming and help improve quality, says Mr Hu. But it will be hard for tobacco to find a market price because there is still only one legitimate buyer: the Chinese National Tobacco Company. Prices will remained distorted by production quotas and the tax on crop sales. (The leaf accounts for only a small proportion of the price of a cigarette, so smokers will notice little difference.) Ultimately, tobacco will not find its real price until the government butts out of the market.


译文：

中国在1978年改革开放之时，其第一批经济改革就包括了对粮食收购的价格的改革，而其后的大丰收也正得益于此。虽然政府最终放弃了对大多数农作物收购价格的控制，但这其中并不包括烟草。直到将近40年后的今天，政府才最终取消了对他们价格的控制。

尽管市场改革的春风在邓小平的领导下吹遍乡村，但政府仍保持着对有着巨大利润的烟草行业的掌握。烟草公司被单独的留在了国家手中。政府通过控制烟草业的价格来确保农民的收入，同时防止他们转向种植别的经济作物。当地政府希望通过提高烟草种植量，不仅因为这样可以带来巨大的税收收益。在2006年，旧时代的针对农作物的税都废除，唯独保留了对烟草的税。南部省会云南的税收中，有80%来自农作物。香烟工业的巨大利益也让中央政府的国库得到大量补充，共占了总税收的7%。

对烟草制品的高需求对维持总体系统的工作有一定的帮助。如今中国5百万的烟草农每年可以生产超过3百万顿烟草，占世界总数的43%--超过了其后的9个国家的烟草输出的总和。中国有世界三分之一的烟民，其中绝大多数是男人。由于低税收，香烟价格如今仅相当于1990年的二分之一。

但即使对于烟草工业来说，指令性经济也有其缺点。其每公顷的盈利增长远低于其他农作物，部分原因是因为政府的刺激无意中刺激了烟草生长土地并不适合烟草叶生长，来自美国伯克利大学公共卫生学院的Teh-Wei Hu说。尽管中国烟草叶平均每平方公里的价格要比美国和巴西的品种便宜，但它仍然是劣等的。

理论上来讲，放弃价格管制可以鼓励大规模种植并提高质量，胡先生说。但对于烟草来说，寻找到合适的市场价格会很困难，因为合法购买者仅剩下了一家：中国国家烟草公司。由于生产限额和商品税，一段时间内其价格并不会回归正常。烟草仅占了香烟价格极少的一部分，所以烟民并不会看到太多改变。在政府管制彻底退出市场前，烟草价格将不会找到合适的价格。