Research published in the medical journal The Lancet says one in three of all the young men in China are likely to die from tobacco, but that the number can fall if the men quit smoking.
The studies, conducted by researchers from Oxford University, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the Chinese Center for Disease Control, show that two-thirds of the young men in China start to smoke, mostly before age 20, and that half of those will eventually be killed by tobacco unless they stop permanently.
The research, involving two studies 15 years apart and including hundreds of thousands of people, says the number of tobacco deaths, mostly among men, reached 1 million by 2010 and will hit 2 million by 2030 if current trends continue.
But researchers say the trends could be stemmed if the smokers quit.
