Dollar bills to burn in battle to open up the East: Bill Scott reports from Peking on the business rivalry that took tennis players down tobacco road to Asia

CHINA and Hong Kong are gripped this week by the modern- day substitute for the Opium Wars as a pair of tobacco multi-nationals go head to head to sponsor rich - and competing - tennis events in Peking and the British colony.

With Asia one of the last areas in the world where tobacco products can be touted with a heavy and relatively unrestricted hand, the tennis on offer this week at the Peking Open could easily remain a mere footnote to the hard sell on television across Asia. This is why R J Reynolds, the makers of Winston and Camel cigarettes, were happy to underwrite the Peking event, while Marlboro got the Hong Kong deal.

Behind-the-scenes bidding skirmishes among sponsors and organisers raged for months in order to attract some of the game's top names to the region for this key week of sport and marketing.

Michael Chang, the American whose Chinese roots are a major influence on his life, was the biggest prize at stake - and the inaugural ATP Tour Peking Open won the fight by gaining the world No 7 as the top seed, thanks certainly to a hefty guarantee and the desire of Chang to come for a first visit to the land of his ancestors.

Chang, whose parents were born in Taiwan, loves to play in Asia and has already earned three titles in the region from six events since January.

Backing up the hard-hitting Chang - who won the French Open title during an emotionally charged week in June 1989 at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre - are a cast of Swedes in the 32-man draw.

The wild-card factor for the Peking public is the American Tommy Ho, anything but a household name anywhere. The 20-year old No 160 is receiving an unaccustomed co-starring role one notch below Chang in the pecking order here.

So important is the presence of two nominally Chinese players in a draw full of Europeans and Americans, that officials delayed Chang's and Ho's opening round singles matches until today in order to have both available for a banquet for tennis players held last night.

Money also talks in Hong Kong, the Asian capital of raw capitalism. Officials at this week's 12-man exhibition event, which has two decades of successful history on the island, will be counting on Stefan Edberg and Ivan Lendl to draw the spectators.

Lendl collected dollars 143,500 ( pounds 95,000) for winning the Seiko Super Tennis in Tokyo on Sunday and somehow neglected to get away with his prize cheque in the rush to catch the first available flight to the Colony.

The rewards on offer in Hong Kong are quite respectable, especially since winners receive their guarantees, air transportation and rooms in five-star luxury overlooking the harbour. In addition there is a dollars 500,000 prize package up for grabs. There are no losers in Hong Kong, and defeats at an 'exho', as the players call them, do not count on the offical record.

In Peking, officials are working hard to present their event in the best possible light, especially in the wake of the Olympic disappointment. 'This is an opportunity to present the game to a billion new people,' said the ATP tournament supervisor Ed Hardisty, a Hong Kong-based Briton. 'There are a lot of smokers in China and this will give exposure to the game.'

The tournament is being played at the Comprehensive Gymnasium, part of a modern Olympic complex used during the 1990 Asian Games. The compound is an oasis of modernity in the city, though such amenities as direct-dial telephones and faxes remain something of a luxury - available but at a price.

A crowd of 200 watched Chang and his brother Carl lose in the doubles to the top seeds, Jacco Eltingh and Paul Haarhuis of the Netherlands, yesterday. The spectators paid the equivalent of dollars 1 for a seat. Those prices will increase twentyfold by Sunday's final.

Chang is expected to indulge in some sightseeing at the Forbidden City and Great Wall. The American seems to have a great time in the East, where he feels at home.

'Asia is a nice place for me,' Chang said. 'I blend in very well, at least I think that I do. I eat Chinese food at home, the culture here is the same for me.'

The hunt for valuable Chang autographs should be in full force as soon as young Chinese fans learn the blocking and rushing tactics employed by youths in the rest of the world. That should take around one match.

If tennis players can be marketing vehicles, then half of China should be lighting up the sponsor's brand after televised coverage of tennis and a week of western-style marketing saturation in the last frontier where the Marlboro cowboy can peddle his wares.