By 2025, China will have 1 million lung cancer patients, according to experts at a forum held on Saturday, one day before World Cancer Day.

China already has the largest number of total lung cancer sufferers, experts said, citing smoking and air pollution as the key reasons.

Currently, lung cancer is the form of cancer with the highest mortality rate for Chinese males, while for females, breast and lung cancer both occupy the top spot, Sun Yan, an academician with the Beijing-based Cancer Institute & Hospital, said at the 6th China North-South Lung Cancer Summit held in Beijing on Saturday.

Over the past 30 years, the mortality rates of lung cancer and breast cancer have increased by 465 percent and 96 percent respectively, the fastest increase among the cancers related to lifestyles, according to Sun, the Beijing Times reported Sunday.  

The disease incidence and mortality rates of lung cancer keep rising. From 2000 to 2005, the number of lung cancer patients in China increased 120,000, according to Zhao Ping, a vice chairman of Cancer Foundation of China.

By 2025, there will be nearly 1 million lung cancer patients in China, Zhi Xiuyi, director of treatment center under the Capital Medical University, who attended the forum, told the Global Times Sunday.

"This 'possibility' will turn into fact in the future," Song Ruilin, president of China Pharmaceutical Industry Research and Development Association and forum participant, told the Global Times.

China still needs strict efforts to strengthen tobacco control. In some areas of the country, tobacco is regarded as a key commercial industry and some local governments regard smoking as a personal issue rather than a public issue, Song said.

Currently, China produces 1.7 trillion cigarettes each year, 2.5 more times than the US, according to the Beijing Times.

There are more than 300 million smokers in China and 740 million people are harmed by secondhand smoke. Every year, 1.2 million people die of diseases related to tobacco in China, Huang Jiefu, president with the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control (CATC), said at a forum on June 30, according to the CATC website.

Without any urgent measures taken, the annual death toll with hit more than 3 million by 2030, Huang said.

The increasingly serious air pollution is another cause of lung cancer, Song said. Smoggy weather has become more frequent in recent years, allowing PM2.5, harmful air particulate with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less, to enter the human body.

China recently earned the dubious distinction of having the world's youngest lung cancer patient, an 8-year-old girl, who is believed to have been regularly exposed to harmful levels of air pollution.

The main method to prevent lung cancer is strengthening tobacco control and improving air quality, Zhong Nanshan, head of the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases in the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical College, told the Global Times, noting that it is important to educate the public about this.