China to ban tobacco marketing within four years?

I find this fascinating -- the Chinese media said today that the world's largest country by population will ban all tobacco advertising by 2011. China is currently the largest cigarette producer and consumer, which makes this announcement even more baffling.

It's estimated that there are 300 million avid smokers in China, more than the entire population of the U.S. With that fact comes an intense focus of international health concerns, but banning tobacco marketing in four years seems too short a timeframe from my viewpoint, although I applaud it heavily.

Perhaps China does not want to see a cigarette-smoking epidemic alongside its rapidly growing economy after watching an obesity epidemic explode in the U.S. recently.