The Chinese government has designated traditional medicine
production as a strategic industry, a senior technology official
told participants at an international conference in Chengdu on
Sunday.
Minister of Science and Technology Xu Guanhua said the Chinese
government has mapped out a detailed strategy to develop the
traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) industry. Modernization of the
industry has been inscribed in the country's primary agenda for
scientific and technological exploration.
The Second International Technology Conference on the
Modernization of Chinese Traditional Medicines opened in Chengdu,
capital of southwest China's Sichuan
Province, on Sunday, attracting 3,000 government and corporate
representatives from 43 countries.
Vice minister of Science and Technology Liu Yanhua made a
keynote speech at the conference, saying that international demand
for TCM has risen dramatically in recent years, which has boosted
the industry's adoption of science and technology.
The country's production value of TCM amounted to 95.8 billion
yuan (about US$12 billion) in 2004, up 18.3 percent from the
previous year.
Liu said net yield and profits of TCM production is much higher
than the average for the country's medical industry.
The country has built 14 technological development bases and
eight demonstration plantation bases of traditional medicine in the
last five years, Liu said.
So far, there are some 1,000 varieties of medicinal herbs
available on the market, 150 strains of which are artificially
cultivated. Plantations are about one million hectares in total
nationwide, representing a 90 percent increase from the year 2000.
Liu said China has developed a cultivation technology for some 500
varieties of medicinal herbs.
The plantations have become a new source of income for Chinese
farmers in backward mountainous regions.
(Xinhua News Agency, China.org.cn September 26, 2005)