MIAMI: Chronic infections, smoking and pollution have contributed to skyrocketing cases of cancer in China, with an estimated 4.3 million new diagnoses last year and 2.8 million deaths, researchers said on Tuesday.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in China, said the report published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians and led by Wanqing Chen of the National Cancer Centre in Beijing. The latest report is based on data from 72 local cancer registries, dating from 2009 to 2011 and representing 6.5 per cent of the population. Using that information, researchers projected there would have been 4,292,000 newly diagnosed invasive cancer cases in 2015 in China.That would equal almost 12,000 new cancer diagnoses each day, and 7,500 deaths.