one out of every three cigarettes in the world is smoked in China

I'd made a note a year or so ago to check an interesting factoid I'd come across. Was it true?

[SFC 26 Jun 2008] article by Tamara Straus:
one out of every three cigarettes in the world is smoked in China

Really?

Well.
Yes!
Here are WHO/Western Pacific Region-Smoking Statistics from 2002.

Among the other stats given:

# Smoking will kill about a third of all young Chinese men alive (under 30 years).
# About 3,000 people die every day in China due to smoking.
# There are more than 300 million Chinese smokers - more than the entire US population. They consume an estimated 1.7 trillion cigarettes per year - or 3 million cigarettes every minute.

WHO. Trusted source. More health-related information available on the site.