Summary of a case study published in 2019
The 2015 Beijing Smoking Control Ordinance requires all indoor and many outdoor public places – including schools, kindergartens, historic and cultural sites, and public transport – to be 100% smoke-free. As an Ordinance that is fully compliant with the WHO FCTC definition of ‘smoke-free’, it is the strictest one in the country and sets a high standard for other cities. It has also established a benchmark for efforts to introduce national smoke-free regulation. To ensure its effective enforcement, the law calls for a whole-of-society response.
In response to the Beijing government’s call for civil society support to enforce the smoking ordinance, the Beijing Tobacco Control Association (BTCA) launched a Beijing Tobacco Control Map based on WeChat. At that time China had an estimated 773 million mobile Internet users and WeChat, or Weixin, was the country’s most popular mobile application. The Chinese government had already invested in online government and civic services through WeChat, including a complaint system for traffic violations. The new mobile enforcement project allowed citizens to use WeChat to report smoking violations in real time, which were recorded and uploaded to a live, interactive tobacco control map on BTCA’s website using tri-coloured flashing lights to identify venues where violations had been reported.
The system automatically notified enforcement volunteers to inspect venues with more than five complaints. It helped verify complaints, educate venue managers on corrective measures and report continued non-compliance to enforcement officers. BTCA’s live map also provided other tobacco control information such as issuance of fines. As a positive example it also showed model venues with good compliance and facilities offering cessation services. viii
Between 2015 and 2018, Beijing citizens reported nearly 25,000 violations via WeChat. The BTCA mEnforcement platform, with its network of citizen and trained volunteers, complemented the government complaints hotline. It also helped city enforcement agencies to deal swiftly with the majority of violations reported around the city centre.
Subsequent improvements in city-level enforcement of the ordinance have been attributed to the tobacco control map project. In the absence of a comprehensive national smoke-free law, Beijing showed how Chinese cities could successfully enforce tobacco control efforts through innovative measures.