Actually, smoking rates in China are not all that much higher than here. Pollution is probably a much more significant factor as to whether this thing kills you or not. There are a number of countries in the swath of heavy pollution that runs from China to Morocco with high smoking rates, higher than China, even. So if those countries have high mortality rates that might be informative.
Population density pollution and dirty conditions didn’t seem to matter in India, but, again, it’s still early and we don’t have comprehensive data from anywhere, yet. Watch South Korea, Italy and Japan. Those countries will tell us a lot. And none of them are as polluted as China, India and Iran.
Still a lot of unknowns.
Is China still treating patients with such things as rhino horn powder and herbs? Maybe that’s part of the problem. When visiting China I don’t recall seeing any major medical centers but a lot of mom and pop herbal concoctions being sold as medicines.
If you believe WHO’s stats, China smokes at about twice the rate the US does. That’s a lot of ciggies and abused lungs.