Xie Jianping was dubbed the "killer academician" when he was elected to the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) in 2011. Despite being lambasted by the public and peers alike due to his research on refining low-tar cigarettes, Xie still insists he will not resign his post, even after his fellow academicians and his bosses have pressured him to quit.

Amid China's escalating campaigns on tobacco control, Xie has been attacked for his academic track record. He has argued that adding traditional Chinese medicine in tobacco products and lessening the amount of tar would render them less harmful. His critics have labeled this as "academic fraud" but tobacco companies have used his claims in their adverts to promote sales.

The most recent request for his dismissal came from seven health associations, who wrote a joint letter to the CAE on March 13 asking for a reinvestigation into his academic fraud and for his membership to be revoked. Pan Yunhe, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), and executive vice president of CAE, told the Beijing Times during the recent two sessions that Xie was being advised to resign. However, Pan stated that the CAE would not initiate a removal of his title unless he quit himself.

Dubious research

Xie, 54, is deputy head of the Zhengzhou Tobacco Research Institute in Henan Province, an official research institute under the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration. In December 2011 Xie was elected to the CAE, one of China's most prestigious academic bodies for his contributions in the development of "low-tar cigarettes."

Within an hour after the list of newly elected CAE academicians being published on December 8, 2011, the first objections were raised by Liu Zhifeng, a prominent social critic on Weibo, who labeled Xie the "killer academician."

"Millions of people die from smoking each year while the government has become the slave of GDP to finance this misleading research," he said.

Liu pointed to the fact that the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration and the China National Tobacco Corporation are operated under the same body. Furthermore, given the official background of the company, which is driven by huge profits from tobacco sales, it is hard to say whether Xie's research is trustworthy and neutral, he said.

The chorus of complain was later joined by several scholars working on tobacco control who also scorned Xie's appointment. This then morphed into a wholesale rebellion with 103 CAE academicians writing a joint letter in May last year asking for the CAE to revoke his title.

According to Wang Ke'an, director of the Thinktank Research Center for Health Development, the "low tar, less harm" theory is academic fraud as tar is not the only carcinogenic substance in tobacco. This research is not based on clinical trials either, he said, and was not practiced on patients with chronic diseases.

To some smokers, refined cigarettes with less tar may be not as powerful as desired, Wang said, which may make them smoke more, causing more harm in the end, he explained.

"His election is the shame of the Chinese Academy of Engineering," said Yang Gonghuan, director of the National Tobacco Control Office and medical professor, was quoted as saying by Chinese media.

By adding Chinese herbal medicine to cigarettes, Xie hoped to reduce the effects of tar in tobacco but Yang countered that this would result in more people becoming addicted to smoking to quell their appetite, Yang said.

A Guangdong-based cigarette brand took on board Xie's ideas of adding herbs into tobacco, and marketed itself as China's first "less harmful" brand. Its sales volumes increased as it advertised its low tar content, with Xie's invention credited for reversing the fates of the corporation.

According to CAE's rules, an academician's title can be removed if a majority of academicians from the same department vote to dismiss him. However, most of those protesting Xie are from the medical body rather than from the environment and light industry department Xie belongs to. 

Low tar cigarettes have been promoted by the State Tobacco Administration, and the tar amount in each cigarette has decreased to 12 milligrams each, from 20 milligram in the 1980s.

In a national meeting on China's tobacco industry in 2011, the administration said they would make lowering tar contents a guiding principle for tobacco industry over the next five years.

Differing reputations

Xie studied under Zhu Zunquan, China's first tobacco academician who specialized in improving the quality of domestic cigarettes through using better tobacco seed selection, agricultural techniques, ingredients and technologies in its production. Xie devoted himself to the chemistry of tobacco and the research on low-tar cigarettes, but soon followed his teacher into the prestigious ranks of the CAE.

They are both considered major contributors to China's tobacco research, but the public see them differently from their industry peers. Zhu was elected as a CAE academician in 1997, when the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control had yet to be activated in China. However, when Xie was elected, tobacco control campaigns in China were already soaring and the Chinese government had made a vow to fight against smoking as the death toll rose among smokers.

Xie campaigned to become a CAE academician three times in 2007, 2009 and 2011, winning a place on his third try. According to the Legal Weekly, it was Xie's employer, the Zhengzhou Tobacco Institute who sponsored Xie's application.

He has kept a low profile since his election and even missed the academy's public conferences several times, likely to avoid a media scramble anytime he pronounced himself in public. 

One academician from Xie's department, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Legal Weekly that Xie is the only CAE academician ever to be told to resign from the body. The CAE has recently cancelled their "tobacco science and engineering" major, which means the CAE will not admit any new members from the tobacco industry in the future.

Although Xie is accused of academic fraud, some people close to him see him as a hardworking scientist, and a student of his said he was a "real scientist who is rigorous and careful in study."

Some people also question as to whether Xie's election was manipulated by the government. Although there has been no evidence of Xie cheating in the election process, some academicians say that having the vote in CAE's environment department, rather than the medical department, was a mistake in itself since Xie worked in a field so closely related to human health.

Although Xie has been publicizing his low-tar cigarettes as being healthier, the Legal Weekly found Xie wrote in a thesis in 2009, where he expressed a contradictory opinion.

In this thesis, he admitted that there is no domestic or international standard on how to evaluate the harm of cigarettes and determine what types of cigarettes can truly be said to be less harmful. "It's not scientific or objective to use the amount of tar to assess the level of harm of cigarettes," he wrote.

Wu Yiqun, a deputy director with the Thinktank Research Center for Health Development, said she saw two sides of Xie. The first poses as a scholar and admits flaws in his research when applying for research funding, and the other acts like a tobacco businessman who brags about his low-tar cigarettes to make profit.

However there is yet no conclusion as whether low-tar products can lower rates of lung cancer. According to the Legal Weekly, China has seen an increase of 5 percent in new lung cancer patients every year for two decades, since the low-tar concept was widely publicized.

Killer stats

China is the world's largest cigarette maker. The tobacco industry provides a large share of governmental tax revenues.Tobacco taxation collected in 2011 totaled 600 billion yuan ($96.54 billion), accounting for 6 percent of the overall national tax revenue that year. In places like Yunnan, Hunan and Guizhou provinces, where the tobacco industry is a major source of government finance, profits from tobacco can account for up to 70 percent of local revenue, the Legal Weekly said.

As tobacco campaigns have become increasingly visible, the Chinese government also banned smoking at all indoor public venues from May last year. However, the rules do not seem to have had much effect as a lot of restaurants including some in Beijing ignore the ban, even if they have set up designated non-smoking areas. China has more than 300 million smokers by now, and some 1.2 million Chinese people die from smoking-related diseases every year, according to the Ministry of Health.

Legal Weekly and the Life Week contributed to this story