How Far Can the Chinese Medicinal Herb Industry Go Riding the Tailwind of the Nobel Prize?
On the evening of December 7, 2015, Tu Youyou, a lifetime researcher at the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences who won the Nobel Prize, delivered a speech in Chinese titled "Artemisinin——A Gift from Traditional Chinese Medicine to the World" at the Nobel Hall of Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. On the 10th, she also attended the award ceremony. Tu Youyou's award not only drew the attention of major news media around the world, but also made everyone once again recognize the profound depth of traditional Chinese medicine. However, for traditional Chinese medicine, the discovery of artemisinin is merely “a young lotus just showing its pointed tip”; it is believed that the gifts traditional Chinese medicine brings to the world will only grow in number.
Tu Youyou's Nobel Prize has allowed traditional Chinese medicine, long questioned as unscientific, to finally hold its head high and win honor for the country, and has made the world recognize this great treasure trove of traditional Chinese medicine. It is also regarded by the industry as the best opportunity to carry forward the art of Qihuang, and undoubtedly injects a “shot in the arm” for the vigorous development of traditional Chinese medicine and its march toward the world.
However, in the current global traditional Chinese medicine market, Japan and South Korea hold a share as high as 80%-90%. As the birthplace of Chinese herbal medicine, China's share is only 2% of global herbal medicine sales. Traditional Chinese medicine is receiving increasing attention worldwide, yet China is merely positioned as a supplier of raw materials for the kampo medicines of countries such as Japan and South Korea. 75% of the production raw materials for Japanese traditional Chinese medicine preparations are imported from China.
According to statistics, Japan is currently the largest producer and consumer of traditional Chinese medicine outside of China. Today Japan has more than 200 kampo medicine factories, prescription kampo medicines are growing at a rate of 15% per year, annual sales reach as high as 1.5 billion US dollars, and about 148 traditional Chinese medicines have been approved by the Japanese government for coverage under the “National Health Insurance System.” Experts say that Japan's largest kampo medicine manufacturer——Tsumura & Co., is the biggest competitor to the internationalization of China's proprietary Chinese medicines. Tsumura & Co. has successively established more than 70 GAP (Good Agricultural Practice for Chinese Crude Drugs) medicinal herb cultivation bases in China. In terms of basic research, Tsumura & Co. has also invested substantial manpower and resources in research on pharmacology, toxicity, dosage form composition standardization, and normalization. Domestic traditional Chinese medicine enterprises, however, lag behind at the source level of medicinal herb bases. Currently Tongrentang has 8 GAP bases in China, making it the Chinese medicine enterprise with the most GAP bases in the country, yet it still falls far short of Tsumura & Co.'s number of bases.
In the long run, the traditional Chinese medicine industry is expected to usher in new growth.
In 2013, the "Several Opinions of the State Council on Supporting and Promoting the Development of Traditional Chinese Medicine" was issued as a supporting document for the new healthcare reform, elevating the traditional Chinese medicine industry to the level of national strategy; this year the State Council successively issued the "Development Plan for Traditional Chinese Medicine Health Services (2015-2020)" and the "Protection and Development Plan for Chinese Medicinal Herbs (2015-2020)." Last month the National Tourism Administration and the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Development of Traditional Chinese Medicine Health Tourism," combining the red-hot tourism industry with traditional Chinese medicine and providing an effective path for improving the traditional Chinese medicine industry chain and the “going global strategy.“ This month traditional Chinese medicine has again received major good news: the State Council passed the "Traditional Chinese Medicine (Draft)," which will be submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for deliberation. Once the draft is passed by legislative vote, China will have its first national law enacted for the revitalization of traditional Chinese medicine.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's "Protection and Development Plan for Chinese Medicinal Herbs (2015-2020)" proposes the development goal of “relying on scientific and technological support, scientifically developing the cultivation and breeding of Chinese medicinal herbs, striving to achieve high quality and safety, sufficient supply, and stable prices for Chinese medicinal herbs, and promoting the sustained and healthy development of the traditional Chinese medicine industry.“ Only by innovating the cultivation models of Chinese medicinal herbs can the quality of medicinal materials be continuously improved, laying the foundation for the entire traditional Chinese medicine industry.
Based on the proposal of the plan, we can foresee that the future trends and development directions of Chinese medicinal herb cultivation will be roughly as follows:
First, large-scale cultivation. The drawbacks of household cultivation are becoming increasingly exposed: cultivation is difficult to mechanize, management is difficult to make scientific, primary processing is difficult to make correct, and storage is difficult to rationalize. Moreover, the rural population continues to decline, the cultivation demographic is aging regionally, and labor costs continue to climb. Cooperatives, large growers, and companies contracting land for large-scale cultivation is bound to be the trend. Large-scale cultivation can solve the technical, management, storage, and sales problems of individual household cultivation, promote the construction of traceability for the quality of Chinese medicinal herbs, and provide a stable and safe source of supply.
Second, standardized cultivation. Relying on science and technology, strengthen basic research on the growth and development characteristics of Chinese medicinal herbs and the correlation between medicinal efficacy and the growing environment, select and breed superior varieties, develop green pest and disease control technologies, develop precision operations, ecological cultivation and breeding, mechanized production, and modern processing technologies for Chinese medicinal herbs, build standardized GAP cultivation bases, and raise the level of modernized production of Chinese medicinal herbs.
Third, market-oriented cultivation. Traditional Chinese medicine production and circulation enterprises and Chinese medicinal herb production enterprises should form strong alliances, implement a strategy of co-building and sharing bases, adapt to local conditions, and jointly build cross-regional concentrated and contiguous Chinese medicinal herb production bases; at the same time, Chinese medicinal herb production enterprises should begin to develop integrated industrial production and operation, gradually becoming the main body of market supply, and achieve integration of supply, production, and sales.
Fourth, regionalization of seeds. Chinese medicinal herbs have specific requirements for the growing environment and possess obvious regional characteristics. Each production area should prioritize supporting distinctive varieties while also taking into account high-yield varieties.
From the current perspective, with the introduction of favorable policies and the innovation capacity of enterprises as the main body, the industrialization process of the domestic traditional Chinese medicine industry will be accelerated, and only then can the essence of the excellent Chinese medical culture be passed on.