Current Situation And Development Strategies Of Traditional Chinese Medicine Exportation

In recent years, because of the gradual change of people’s health outlook from therapy to prevention and the growing prominence of the side effects of western medicine, countries all over the world have an increasing demand for the natural medicine. According to the statistics of the World Health Organization, the total value of international herbal medicine market has been over60billion dollars so far and it is growing by an average of10percent annually. It is a very good opportunity of development for Traditional Chinese medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine is the traditional medicine of China and it embraces the experience and theoretical knowledge of ancient Chinese people’s struggle against diseases. It is the quintessence of China’s five thousand years of civilization. Huang Di’s Classic of Internal Medicine is the earliest work about traditional Chinese medicine theory and Shen Nong’s Herbal Classic is the earliest work about Traditional Chinese medicine. Chinese people who are full of wisdom record the systematical medicine theory and the abundant medical resources in the books which are handed down from generation to generation and lay a solid foundation for the development of traditional Chinese medicine.At present, China has the most abundant natural medicine resources and complete and unified traditional Chinese medicine theory. Traditional Chinese medicine industry with independent intellectual property should have strong competitiveness in the international natural medicine market. However, due to the cultural differences between eastern and western countries, the underdevelopment of traditional Chinese medicine industry itself and other reasons, the sales of traditional Chinese medicine products only share a small proportion of the overall sales of international natural medicine market. It is far behind the botanical medicine from Japan and Korea. There also exist some problems in the exportation of traditional Chinese medicine products. Traditional Chinese medicine industry is one of few industries owning independent intellectual property in China. In the era of knowledge economy, traditional Chinese medicine industry has strong development advantages and broad market prospect. Studying the problems existing in the exportation of traditional Chinese medicine products, promoting the international competitiveness of traditional Chinese medicine industry, and making it one of the economic growth points of our country has great significance for China’s economic development.On the base of a good deal of documentary materials and data, the paper analyses the current situation of traditional Chinese medicine products exportation from general condition, product structure and market structure. Through the analysis of current situation of exportation, the paper summaries some problems existing in the traditional Chinese medicine products exportation:although the exportation of traditional Chinese medicine has been increasing year by year, the exporting regions are limited. Traditional Chinese medicine is mainly exported to Korea, Japan and Southeast Asian countries. The exportation to those countries has been up to60percent of all the traditional Chinese medicine exportation; traditional Chinese medicine product has a low market share of the international medicine market, which is only3percent to5percent. The market share is far less than that of Korean and Japanese plant medicine; the product structure is inappropriate. The exportation of traditional Chinese medicinal raw materials and plant extracts accounts for more than70percent of the traditional Chinese medicine exportation, while the exportation of Chinese patent medicine with high added value has been held back. In recent years, there is a trend of deficit of Chinese patent medicine trade; the exportation often meets with technical barriers due to the strict requirements of medicine registration in foreign countries and problems of quality, packaging of our products.Through the analysis of development and trade condition of traditional Chinese medicine in the overseas market and combing with relevant literature information, the paper summaries the following reasons of the above problems:cultural differences between eastern and western countries influence the development of Traditional Chinese medicine in overseas market. Medical theory system is deeply influenced by culture. Different cultural tradition and ways of thinking make traditional Chinese medicine and western medicine differ in method, principles and ideas and so on. Western consumers can’t accept traditional Chinese medicine culture completely; the traditional Chinese medicine enterprises lack investment for the research and development of traditional Chinese medicine and they have weak technical innovation ability; the scale of our traditional Chinese medicine enterprises is not large enough to compete with foreign pharmaceutical enterprises; the protection of traditional Chinese medicine intellectual property is not sufficient. More and more foreign enterprises are taking advantage of their abundant capital strength, advanced technical conditions and consummate skills of intellectual property protection and medical information of ancient China to grab quantities of intellectual property so as to make huge profits. At last, according to the existing problems and reasons, the paper gives some suggestions for improving the traditional Chinese medicine exportation:the government should pay more attention to the culture exchange and strengthen the International communication of traditional Chinese medicine; the government and enterprises should both strengthen the protection of traditional Chinese medicine intellectual property; the enterprises should enhance the quality management of traditional Chinese medicine products and actively cope with the technical barriers to trade; the enterprises should carry on technical innovation and accelerate the modernization of traditional Chinese medicine; the traditional Chinese medicinal resources should be protected; the government should improve the organization structure of traditional Chinese medicine industry to establish modern enterprises; the enterprises should learn the successful managing and operating experiences from Japan and Korea.With the development of global economic integration, the competition between medicine enterprises home and abroad is getting fiercer. How to promote the competitiveness of traditional Chinese medicine products is a problem need to be solved. Traditional Chinese medicine has experienced thousands of years of clinical trial and natural selection and its efficacy has been proved. China’s traditional Chinese medicine industry has incomparable advantages in medical resources. Now, it faces a good chance for development. With reasonable development strategies for exportation, China’s traditional Chinese medicine export trade will have a bright future.