Olympic champion Liu under fire for tobacco links

BEIJING, May 26 (Reuters) Olympic 110 metres hurdles champion Liu Xiang has come under fire for his links to China's most popular cigarette brand.

Liu signed a host of sponsorship deals after becoming the first Chinese man to win an Olympic track gold at Athens in 2004. One of those deals was with the Baisha corporation, which sells 75 billion cigarettes a year.

A book entitled, ''My Heart is Flying: A Liu Xiang Photobook,'' was published last month featuring around 60 pictures of the sprint hurdler.

However, the book contained nearly as many pictures of cranes, the bird that adorns the 1.5 million cases of Baisha cigarettes produces annually.

''Liu Xiang is a national hero, and such association with a tobacco company will bring a great negative impact, especially to the children,'' Jiang Yuan, vice head of the National Tobacco Control Office of China's Health Ministry, told Reuters by telephone today.

''Although tobacco was not directly referred to, the flying crane is a well-known symbol of that tobacco company.'' Jiang said she had approached the Track and Field Administration of the National Sports Bureau to try and recruit Liu to work alongside other national sporting figures on anti-tobacco campaigns.

''I suggested that Liu Xiang should participate in our anti-tobacco campaign, but they said he's too busy training and had already advertised some other public campaigns like environment protection,'' she said.

''I was really disappointed to see this book published.'' CHARITY BENEFITS Wang Zhengqi, deputy secretary of the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control, was not aware of the book but knew of a television ad that used the ''My Heart is Flying'' slogan, which was subsequently banned.

''They should not use the image of Olympic champions to advertise a tobacco company,'' she told Reuters. ''The general administration of sports should recognise such problems.'' Baisha say the ''Fly'' foundation, of which Liu is honorary president, is a charity funded by the contributions of their staff and the profits from the book will go to the Hope Project, which aids primary education in undeveloped areas.

China is the world's largest producer and consumer of cigarettes with about 320 million smokers getting through nearly 2 trillion sticks a year.

Tax on cigarettes contributed 19.83 billion dollars to the government in 2005, around 5 percent of fiscal revenues.

The World Health Organisation estimates that smoking kills 1.2 million people a year in China.

REUTERS PG PC1640