Although it may not be immediately clear from its title, this book is a classic example of its kind: an attempt to combine academic analysis with public health values to further the agenda on tobacco control. In other words, it is an overt attempt by a range of authors with public health backgrounds (from universities, domestic tobacco control and international organizations) to put pressure on policymakers to further control tobacco, based on the widely held belief that the collection and dissemination of knowledge regarding the adverse health effects associated with smoking and passive smoking is key to that control. From a political science perspective it is clear that there are many more factors involved, such as: socioeconomics (including the prevalence of smoking, public attitudes to tobacco control and its economic contribution); institutions (who has responsibility for tobacco policy?); networks (how organized are pressure participants and what is their relationship to policymakers?); and agendas (how important is tobacco control as a policy issue and how high is it on the policy agenda?). In short, the international experience suggests that the facts do not speak for themselves.

In this respect, China is a good case in point and the book serves to outline the scale of the problem – the “tobacco death toll” is one million premature deaths per year and social and health costs are estimated at US$5 billion. China's 350 million smokers (66 per cent of adult men and 3 per cent of adult women) accounts for one-third of the world's smoking population and its state-owned monopoly produces one-third of the world's tobacco leaf and cigarettes. Herein lies the problem for public health activists: with prevalence among men so high and tobacco so important to China's economy (state-controlled tobacco production has contributed 8–11 per cent of total revenue in the past 15 years and supported a large part of the farming sector), many forms of tobacco control are a hard sell to both the public and policymakers. There are also fewer domestic sources for tobacco control pressure. For example, countries with strong tobacco control regimes also tend to have a medical profession united (at least politically – some doctors do smoke) in its blanket opposition to smoking and passive smoking. In China, less than half of the physicians surveyed had a comprehensive knowledge of the links between smoking and illness, while more than one-third admitted to smoking in front of their patients.

To its credit, this book addresses this unfavourable political context directly. Indeed, its main premise is that, while key policymakers in China appear to be receptive to tobacco control measures (such as the regulation of tobacco advertising, smoking in public places and sales to children) they are reluctant to implement measures – and particularly any increase in taxation on tobacco consumption – that will undermine tobacco's economic role (indeed, the subtitle could have been economics versus health) and produce other unintended consequences, such as the introduction of a regressive tax and a shift in consumption to cheaper but more harmful cigarettes.

Therefore, the book's primary focus is to highlight the evidence on tobacco use and explore the question of what tobacco control measures work best and what measures stand the best chance of being adopted. Its aim is to combine knowledge of the health costs related to smoking with the evidence-based argument that further tobacco controls will be economically advantageous. In this regard, its efforts are impressive, with measures on morbidity and mortality combined with health-economic measures developed to estimate the “health burden of disease of smoking and passive smoking” (“Disability Adjusted Life Years”) and financial measures to estimate the direct (healthcare) and indirect (productivity) costs of smoking-related illnesses (by gender and geography). Its authors then consider the likely effects of tobacco taxation, suggesting that an increased tax would increase revenue which, in turn, could be used to subsidize alternative forms of farming (the book also suggests that tobacco leaf production is less advantageous to farmers than other crops), finance healthcare to the poor and promote health education while reducing smoking prevalence (i.e. based on the argument that low-income smokers will not be economically disadvantaged if they give up smoking completely).

The data brought together in this book is an impressive mix of innovation (in terms of how, for example, surveys are applied to areas difficult to research) and speculation. However, projects of this kind must come with a health warning. Since agenda-setting is primarily about a biased presentation of facts, combined with an appeal to the emotions, it is tempting to conclude that the academic purist will not trust the information as presented. On the other hand, at least the authors of this book tell you what their biases are! The authors also provide most of us with an admirable lesson in how to foster collaboration between academics and practitioners.

There may be little in this book for an audience whose primary interest is in Chinese politics. Rather, this is written for a public health audience, to be used internationally and as a means to put further pressure on policymakers (since China's ratification of the WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is unlikely to be enough).