For centuries, traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) has been a national treasure.The TCM industry, however, has yet to take a leading role among the country’s medical businesses. Worse still,TCM lags far behind Western medicine in both industry and daily use.
China’s pharmaceutical industry had an output value of 1.256 trillion yuan ($193.2 billion) in 2010, said the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). Of this total, TCM accounted only for 317 billion yuan ($48.8 billion).