| Chinese Medicine has been spreading widely around world due to its complete theory system and satisfactory curative effect. As the neighboring countries of China, Japan and Korea were deeply affected by Chinese traditional culture. Chinese medicine, as well, has been spreading over the two countries down through the ages. Nowadays, Korean Medicine in Korea and Japanese Kampo in Japan have already been developed as unique medical systems. With regard to Europe and America, Marco Polo mentioned Chinese Medicine in his letters for many times. Nevertheless, Chinese Medicine started its prevalence over Europe in the true sense from 1930s. Today, Chinese Medicine, especially acupuncture, has penetrated into every corner of the world, and has been playing a significant role in guarding the health of the people. The history of the spreading of Chinese Medicine is in a sense the process of the penetrating and developing of the internationalization of Chinese Medicine.However, In western countries, Chinese Medicine, which is not admitted as a scientific medical system, were still categorized under CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine). With the development of CAM in recent years and more and more reports about the side effect of chemical medicine, CAM has been picking up popularity in lots of countries for its advantages of satisfactory effect and natural sense. The amount of research papers published in famous SCI periodicals are gradually climbing up.In a sense, the analysis to the development of CAM in western countries shows the international background for Chinese Medicine and acupuncture. It can help us in prospecting the development trends of Chinese Medicine and finding the questions of internationalization of Chinese Medicine. On Feb.27th, 2007, FDA of USA issued Guidance of Industry on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Products and Their Regulation by the Food and Drug Administration, Draft, which admits for the first time that Chinese Medicine, like western traditional medicine, is a science with complete theory and implementation system.Being representative of purely natural medicine, Chinese medicine has become the medicine with the most promising future of development. Some well-known medicine companies in western countries, therefore, take advantage of the bountiful resource of Chinese medicine, plentiful TCM prescriptions of Chinese patent medicine without much sense of protecting their intellectual property rights, abundant resource of Chinese herbal medicine, and low-cost human resources in China, and trap all kinds of technical hindrance to prevent Chinese patent medicine in China from entering international markets to compete; while at the same time, the western companies import from China the low-priced raw materials of Chinese medicine, and then after the processing and selling the products labeled with their own brands, they gain huge amount of profits from the international market and even back in China.According to the statistics from World Health Organization,4 billion people across the world use Chinese herbal medicine in their medical treatment, which account for 80% of the world population.Since 1972 when former American president Nixon visited China, the spreading of acupuncture overseas has reached a climax. The number of foreign periodicals and documents on acupuncture has been increasing year by year. Due to the positive healing effect of curing pain disorder, chronic diseases, and etc., acupuncture has been brought into medical security system in such western countries as America. Many states in America have specialized acupuncture examinations for testers to get acupuncture license before they practice medicine. In those main developed western countries, acupuncture has gained the status of an independent medical system on the whole.With the development of CAM, Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture in foreign countries, more and more people are not only experiencing these new medical implementations, but finding the positive medical effects from them. There are more and more researches being made in CAM, Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture in western countries. The articles which were published in SCI periodicals with high impact factors are gradually picking up.In China, however, there are seldom systematical retrieval and analysis of the articles on CAM, Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture, published in SCI database. As a result, many domestic Chinese Medicine professionals know neither much about the situation of publication of Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture-related papers in the internationally well-known medicine periodicals, nor about the development of Chinese Medicine overseas.Just on this account, the author intends to search periodicals with high impact factors in SCI database for the papers on CAM, Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture, classify them, and analyze them from such aspects as writing methods, paper design, spectrum of disease, therapeutic evaluation, so as to find out the international development and research situation of CAM, Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture, to explore the future of internationalization and modernization of Chinese Medicine, and to offer some reference for Chinese Medicine academics in their researches. Meanwhile, through collecting documents about present international development of CAM, Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture, as well as domestic development of Chinese Medicine industries, this dissertation also analyzes the background of the internationalization of Chinese Medicine, and the difficulties and challenges it is faced with.On the one hand, through such key words in "Title" and "Topic" as "Chinese Medicine", "Herb", "Herbal", "Acupuncture", "Electro-acupuncture", "Moxibustion", "Alternative Medicine", "Complementary Medicine", "Integrative Medicine", "Traditional Medicine", and "CAM", the author searches among those periodicals with an impact factor above 3 from SCI database for papers of a type of Article or Review on CAM, Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture published from 1990 to 2009. The types of papers published in source periodicals of SCI include Letter, Article, Review, and Editorial Report, among which Article and Review are the most valuable paper types.The searching finds out that in those source periodicals of SCI with an impact factor above 3, there are 681 papers on CAM, among which 253 papers are reviews and surveys,392 papers are randomized controlled trial (or RCT) articles, and 30 papers are of the other types. Altogether reviews and surveys account for 43%, RCT articles account for 50%, while other types account for 7%. There are 81 papers on CAM published in source periodicals of SCI with an impact factor above 10.The searching also finds out that in those source periodicals of SCI with an impact factor above 3, there are 186 papers on Chinese Medicine, among which (?) papers are about single Chinese herb and single compound of Chinese Herbs, 32 papers are about Chinese herbal compound,25 papers are of the other types. There are 24 papers on Chinese Medicine published in source periodicals of SCI with an impact factor above 10.As to the ones on Acupuncture published in those source periodicals of SCI with an impact factor above 3, altogether there are 597 papers, among which 404 articles are about RCT proving the effectiveness of acupuncture in treating some certain disease,129 papers are reviews and surveys, and 97 are the papers of the other types. There are 46 papers on Acupuncture published in source periodicals of SCI with an impact factor above 10.On the other hand, in terms of organization and writing method, the searched papers are classified into the following three types:Hypothesis papers; Description papers; Methodology papers. Hypothesis papers usually put forward a hypothesis and then prove it; Description papers describe a research or experiment through narration; while Methodology papers mainly illustrate a new method of research or experiment. Writing characteristics are summarized respectively through an analysis of such sections of those papers as introduction, material and method, conclusion, and discussion.Through the analysis to the searched papers, the author found the key problem exists in the present researches of CAM, Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture is to settle a standard medical effects evaluation system, and perfect itself during the researching activities. Once the evaluation system are acknowledged by international medical community, the research papers of CAM, Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture will be much easier to be accepted by the periodicals of high IF. Researches on Chinese Medicine in the term of modern science are the key for the modernization and internationalization of Chinese Medicine. |
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