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2013-February-16

Traditional Chinese Medicine amid Troubled Development

The SARS outbreak in 2003 created a demand that pushed prices of Chinese herbal medicine to a record high and made Bozhou a household name across China. “Merchants from all over the country came to Bozhou to buy herbal medicine. The teeming scene was impressive,” Fang Min recalls.

In 2006, Fang Min established her own company – Anhui Fangmin Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. The value of the annual production of her company has now reached RMB 300 million. Its products are divided into nine categories containing 200 varieties, including drinks, tablets and tonics, and it has established business partnerships with more than 200 herbal medicine manufacturers and dealers across the country.

Besides a TCM pharmaceutical factory and a tonic plant, her company also operates a hotel and TCM plantations in Hubei, Shandong and Gansu provinces amounting to several million mu. This is a far cry from where Fang Min started.

The products they offer are constantly changing. “Every year we keep the most competitive products and eliminate those least suited to the market,” says Fang Min. Moreover, Bozhou has a long history of TCM diagnosis, and Fang Min has collected over 1,000 prescriptions, some of which are difficult to find today, in order to develop her products and stay innovative.

Fang Min entered the TCM market at just the right time, and her company has grown with its development in China. Anhui Fangmin Pharmaceutical is now famous in Anhui’s pharmaceutical industry, where many private TCM dealers continue to spring up.

The Plight for Development

Bozhou has a history of more than 1,800 years of planting and selling Chinese herbal medicine and now serves as a TCM industry scientific modernization base. About one million mu of farmland in Bozhou’s rural area is dedicated to growing Chinese medicinal herbs, and 500,000 people earn a living by growing, processing or selling herbal medicines or are employed in the related service sector. Another 200,000 people originally from Bozhou have found work related to the Chinese herbal medicine industry outside of the city.

After years of effort, Bozhou has built itself into the country’s largest and busiest market for Chinese herbal medicine, selling various products including tonics, drinks and cosmetics. Bozhou is currently home to 78 manufacturers of TCM medicine. In 2011, those companies with a turnover exceeding RMB five million registered a total production value of RMB 10.236 billion, an increase of 44 percent over the previous year. Total imports and exports also reached nearly US $100 million.

However, the feverish demand that has fed this prosperity has also spawned a sinister side to the industry – that of counterfeit medicine. “At least a quarter of the products that are in the market are fake,” says one trader who wishes to remain anonymous. Many in the industry employ ways to make cheaper, inferior products, such as adding salt to dried scorpions to increase the weight and make more money for less.

In recent years, the government of Bozhou has worked hard to combat these charlatans, but preventive measures they have introduced have not solved the problem once and for all. “There are 2,600 kinds of Chinese herbal medicines on sale everyday; it is difficult to control the market,” an official in Bozhou said.

One of the objectives of establishing the Kangmei Traditional Chinese Medicine Market in Bozhou was to eliminate counterfeit medicine. But this is no easy task because of the lack of industry standards and absence of effective measures to control distribution channels and identify places of origin.

Introducing industry standards to something like TCM is a tricky problem. “Chinese herbal medicine has no expiration date. Every batch of products has different colors, shapes, properties and degrees of freshness. Some herbs of the same species may even have different functions and medical value depending on their place of origin. Moreover, the harvest time and storage conditions of herbs also influence a herb’s effects. Thus the prices vary greatly,” Fang Min said.

Bozhou’s local government hopes to establish a tracking system for quality assessment, in a bid to eradicate fake products.

Establish Standards

The need to set up technical standards is imperative not only for the TCM market, but also for TCM hospitals and TCM training if TCM is to continue to prosper and develop.

On September 6, 2012, when the TCM Expo was held in Bozhou, the SATCM held a forum, inviting presidents of famous TCM hospitals to discuss and develop a suitable approach to the development of TCM.

“TCM is losing ground in public hospitals,” said Yang Rongchen, director of the Department of Medical Administration of the SATCM. Some TCM hospitals prescribe more Western medicines than TCM drugs and there are even so-called TCM hospitals at the county-level that do not provide TCM services at all, Yang revealed.

Over the 30 years since reform and opening-up was launched, the number of TCM hospitals has increased from over 400 to more than 3,000. Taking into account TCM institutions, private TCM hospitals and clinics, the number exceeds 4,000. The demand for TCM treatment has also increased rapidly. Appointments for TCM treatment reached 550 million in 2011, representing 20 percent of total outpatient appointments that year.

However, Yang Rongchen still has concerns for the future of the TCM: “Now we have a batch of old and renowned TCM experts, but they will leave us someday. Do they have qualified successors?”

According to Yang Rongchen, the SATCM is working on reform of the TCM industry. Efforts have been made to create TCM treatment plans and promote them around the country on a trial basis. For example, on November 8, 2012 the SATCM released TCM treatment plans for nine bone injuries/diseases. On December 1, 2012 it further released TCM treatment plans for five gastrointestinal diseases. “By the end of 2012, the TCM treatment plans for 300 diseases had been published,” Yang Rongchen said.

“Our ultimate goal is to improve the effects of TCM clinical treatments, allow patients to understand the process of treatment and help newly graduated TCM physicians adapt to their work as quickly as possible,” Yang said.

Standards will be set in the TCM field in a similar way to those in Western medicine. Yang believes that reforms will make it easier to monitor the effect of the TCM treatment and cultivate TCM doctors.

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