Export Of Chinese Traditional Patent Medicine: Issues And Approaches

Traditional Chinese Medicine and Pharmacology can be called the national treasureand quintessence of China. Especially, Chinese traditional patent medicine is stronglyembedded in the Chinese traditional culture and beliefs, and should have become oneof China's national industries with competitive advantages. However, in the neardecades, Chinese traditional patent medicine industry enjoyed only a tiny slice ofmarket share in the global traditional medicine trade. And now its export developmentis becoming the concern in the fields of governments, associations, academies andhealth care industry. In this paper, the author collected and analyzed tremendousreliable data on the export and import of Chinese tradition patent medicine, on thebasis of which he not only made scientific calculation of the right share of Chinesetraditional patent medicine export in the global traditional medicine trade, but firstlyprovided the whole trade competitive indexes (TCI) and revealed comparativeadvantage indexes (RCA) from 1998 to 2005 for this industry and properly drew theoutline of its status quo in the international competition. Further, through theapplication of Michael Porter's National Diamond Model in the analyzing theinternational competitiveness of Chinese traditional patent medicine and theconclusion of successful cases in the export development of Japan's ancienttraditional Chinese medicine and Tongrentang's Chinese traditional patent medicine,this study made several policy proposals on the export development of Chinesetraditional patent medicine industry from the aspects of governments, medicalassociations and corporations. For example, Chinese language and tourism can beglobally promoted to improve the international culture environment of TraditionalChinese Medicine. The medical associations can take active roles in the exportdevelopment of Chinese traditional patent medicine. And relative industries andaffiliated infrastructure can be built to facilitate the growth of this industry. On thebasis of enormous reliable data, and quantitative and qualitative analysis, these policyproposals have scientific and feasible characters, and can be used as reference whenthe industry administration and the corporations make industry policies anddevelopment strategies.