When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Already a subscriber? Log in .

You've reached your limit of one free article.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime .

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Exclusive International news coverage

Ad-free experience NEW

Weekly digital Magazine NEW

9 daily & weekly Newsletters

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Free trial

30-days free access, then $2.90
per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch
Economy

Traditional Chinese Medicine? 100% Made In Japan

More and more Japanese, South Korean and other foreign manufacturers of TCM are not even using Chinese raw materials for the ancient cures. What is left then?

A woman in Beijing packaging medicine
A woman in Beijing packaging medicine
Guo Chenqi

BEIJING — A minor craze is underway among Chinese tourists for Dusmock, a herbal medicine developed by the Japanese company Kobayashi Pharmaceutical. Reports have recently been published in various Chinese media outlets about the many visitors from China buying up the cure on trips to Japan.

Dusmock was launched in September 2014 and was originally targeted at smokers with bronchial asthma and respiratory functions weakened by Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. The dried decoction in granular form, literally named "lung–cleaning soup" in Chinese, has seen sales soar by 40% compared with the year before, mainly thanks to the Chinese tourists visiting Japan who believe it can also help them clean up the muck in their lungs caused by China's notorious smog.

That this latest offering of kampo, literally meaning "Han (Chinese) medicine," has been developed in Japan is by no means a new phenomenon. The Japanese and South Koreans together account for 80% of the production of traditional Chinese medicines (TCM), whereas China accounts for only 5%.

Some 75% of the raw herbs used for Japan's TCM products used to come from China. In order to guarantee the quality of the herbs, Japan's largest TCM manufacturer, Tsumura & Co., set up 70 herbal planting sites in China, whereas China's largest TCM producer, Tongrentang, owns only eight. But what is changing now is that China might even be losing its role as dominant raw material supplier for the medicinal herbs.

In response to the growing price of China's medicinal herbs since 2006, Tsumura started a large-scale trial of planting licorice, a major component in TCM, so as to avoid relying on China's supply for natural licorice. By 2011, the Japanese company had successfully achieved artificially cultivating licorice while the staple's market price more than doubled. Meanwhile, other Japanese pharmaceutical firms are also carrying out herbal cultivation operations in Southeast and Central Asia. For example, Shinnihonseiyaku established a project in Myanmar's eastern Kayin State, growing more than 30 species of Chinese medicinal plants.

Toshiharu Nagane, Shinnihonseiyaku's development section manager, is bullish. "By 2018 we'll probably be able to harvest 2000 tons of herbs annually, which is equal to 10% of Japan's raw drug import."

Cokay, a Japanese pharmaceutical raw materials manufacturer, set up a factory in Azerbaijan, in 2013, producing an extract of glycyrrhetic acid from licorice, and another factory in the Caucasus.

Meanwhile on the R&D front, Japan and South Korea own more than 70% of TCM patents internationally, whereas China owns an embarrassing 0.3%. Indeed, as early as 1972, Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare started standardizing and modernizing the kampo production methods. Thanks to the constantly improving regulations and monitoring of the standardized ingredients of medicines, today Japan has developed hundreds of kinds of kampo drugs in a granular form that is easier to ingest.

It is worth noting that almost all these Japanese kampo medicines draw their therapies entirely from the Treatise on Cold Damage Disorders, a Chinese clinical textbook compiled by Zhang Zhongjing around the early 2nd century, or the Pediatric Encyclopedia of the Song dynasty.

Manfred Porkert, director of the Institute of East Asian Studies at the University of Munich, explained that China has never gotten serious about capitalizing on its own tradition. "TCM has never gotten proper cultural status, nor have the necessary epistemological research and rational scientific inquiries been carried out to establish its traditional scientific status," he said.

Ryuta Fujii, president of Ryukakusan Co., the pharmaceutical firm that produces another particularly popular cough medicine among the Chinese, told the China News website that Japan is reaping the benefits of years of investment and study. "Though kampo maintains a Chinese image, Japanese-produced herbal medicines have achieved considerable technical progress."

Rather than relying on a Chinese doctor's diagnosis and personal prescription, Japan's kampo depends on vigorous manufacturing standards, which are commercialized in soluble pills or granules convenient for sales domestically or abroad. Meanwhile, beyond squeezing out Chinese competition, Japanese kampo manufacturers are also striving to meet ever stronger Chinese customer demand, as evidenced by all the advertisements addressed to Chinese tourists in the numerous drug stores of Tokyo's Ginza and Akihabara districts.

Alas, apart from the name "Chinese," one wonders what will be the legacy of products and practices that originated in ancient China if the whole industry is driven from abroad.


*This article was originally written in Chinese by Guo Chenqi, a contributor for the Economic Observer. It was translated by iQ language expert Lisa Lane.

Sign up here for Worldcrunch iQ

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Society

Is Disney's "Wish" Spreading A Subtle Anti-Christian Message To Kids?

Disney's new movie "Wish" is being touted as a new children's blockbuster to celebrate the company's 100th anniversary. But some Christians may see the portrayal of the villain as God-like and turning wishes into prayers as the ultimate denial of the true message of Christmas.

photo of a kid running out of a church

For the Christmas holiday season?

Joseph Holmes

Christians have always had a love-hate relationship with Disney since I can remember. Growing up in the Christian culture of the 1990s and early 2000s, all the Christian parents I knew loved watching Disney movies with their kids – but have always had an uncomfortable relationship with some of its messages. It was due to the constant Disney tropes of “follow your heart philosophy” and “junior knows best” disdain for authority figures like parents that angered so many. Even so, most Christians felt the benefits had outweighed the costs.

That all seems to have changed as of late, with Disney being hit more and more by claims from conservatives (including Christian conservatives) that Disney is pushing more and more radical progressive social agendas, This has coincided with a steep drop at the box office for Disney.

Keep reading...Show less

The latest