Support for healthy development of TCM

Editor's notes: At a meeting of the State Council, or China's Cabinet, on Sunday, Premier Li Keqiang laid out measures for the upgrading and sustainable development of Traditional Chinese Medicine to better serve people's needs. Following are comments from the media:

Economic Daily

To better benefit people's well-being, the State Council meeting confirmed five major measures to promote the development of TCM, including the exploration and application of modern technologies and industrial models to accelerate the industry's development, making it easier to access TCM services, developing TCM-related healthcare services and increasing the funds and policy support for TCM.

With favorable policies, TCM can ensure its development. That Chinese scientist Tu Youyou was one of the winners of the 2015 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for her work in developing artemisinin therapies should act as a spur to the development of TCM. It should also be a reminder that we should continue seeking new TCM fruits and innovations and push for the sector's modernization and popularization across the world.

To boost TCM development, the core and most pressing problem now is how to cultivate the needed TCM talents that are in short supply in China. The country's current 345,000 TCM practitioners are far from meeting the need for TCM's development. Some problems exposed in the development of the TCM industry were also caused by the insufficiency of qualified TCM practitioners.

gmw.cn

There is always an enormous demand for medicines in every country, and the full-fledged development of the pharmaceutical industry is a sign of an innovative economy.

Developing the TCM industry is not only necessary to serve people's well-being, but also necessary for boosting the country's development, as Premier Li said at the meeting. In developed countries, the pharmaceutical sector is one of the fields that receive the largest input of funds.

The fact that many innovative drugs in China, including anti-cancer ones, mainly depend on imports and are not included in the national medical insurance coverage, which have considerably raised medical expenses for Chinese patients, means now is a good time to develop middle- and high-end TCM medicines.

The pharmaceutical industry needs huge inputs and there is a long delay before there are returns on investments, but the returns when they come can be long-lasting. Aside from the TCM industry's own efforts, government policy support is also needed.

yicai.com

The medicine industry is directly related to people's well-being.

Since the launch of reform and opening-up, or the market-oriented reform in 1978, the income of China's medicine sector and its profits have maintained a growth rate of more than 20 percent year-on-year. However, compared with the above 8 percent in many developed countries, medicine investment accounts for only 5 percent in China's GDP, which means the sector still has huge development potential. It is therefore natural for the State Council to lay out measures for the development of the medicine industry as part of the country's efforts to promote its stable economic growth.