Appeal — That 'TCM Sustainable Development' Be Listed as a Major Science-and-Technology Project in the Medium-and-Long-Term Plan
To the leaders of the Party Central Committee and the State Council:
In keeping with the spirit of the Sixteenth Party Congress, the medium-and-long-term science-and-technology development plan, directly led by Premier Wen Jiabao, has now entered the critical stage of strategic research and breakthrough. This is the time of shaping a major strategic decision tied to the long-term interests of the country and the nation; it will set our country's future scientific direction. Yet by report, in the plan the development of TCM has not received the weight it deserves. We who have worked long in the TCM field are gravely concerned. We hold that TCM sustainable development is a strategic question tied to China's livelihood. We therefore solemnly propose to the Party Central Committee and the State Council: list "TCM sustainable development" as a major science-and-technology project in the medium-and-long-term plan. For:
First, TCM has a comparative strength, capable of solving the health needs of 1.3 billion people.
TCM is as ancient as the history of the Chinese nation, contributing immeasurably to the people's flourishing — keeping the Chinese nation, through countless plagues, from the millions-dead toll Europe knew. In the SARS calamity TCM again made a great contribution: the world's average SARS mortality was 11%; mainland China's was 7% (Guangzhou, where TCM entered earliest, was under 4%); Taiwan 27%; Hong Kong and Singapore both 17%. Unlike Western antagonistic therapy, TCM does not fight the virus — it guards and replenishes the patient's right qi, so that evil cannot overcome the right; it gives evil a way out. Western medicine must first find the pathogen, then a drug to kill it; before the cause is found, no treatment plan can be decided, and no medicine given. TCM's essence is pattern-discernment and treatment, mobilizing the body's self-recovery capacity to restore health. So in treating diseases of unknown cause and multi-factor diseases TCM holds an irreplaceable advantage. Moreover, Western treatment of a SARS patient cost on average 50,000–100,000 RMB; the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, treating SARS primarily with TCM, spent at most 5,000 on its priciest case.
As Vice-Premier Wu Yi noted on 8 May 2003: TCM "has accumulated a rich body of experience in preventing and treating major epidemic disease." During Eastern Han's Jian'an years a shanghan epidemic raged; Zhang Zhongjing's Shanghan Lun effectively halted it. In the Ming Yongle through Chongzhen reigns, repeated great epidemics: Wu Youke's Discourse on Pestilence and Ye Tianshi's wei-qi-ying-xue pattern-discernment subdued these infectious diseases distinct from shanghan. Smallpox — once a dreaded contagion — China invented inoculation by human-pox prevention in the Northern Song; only later did it pass to Europe.
In 1956 Shijiazhuang saw a Japanese-encephalitis-B outbreak; the White Tiger Decoction, in the Zhongjing manner, gave outcomes ahead of the world. In 1958 Guangzhou's epidemic-B outbreak — TCM's efficacy reached 90%, with no sequelae. In the 1960s, with measles raging through Guangdong, TCM's pox-permeating, heat-clearing method ended deaths in every village it reached. The US CDC once compared 1988 Shanghai's TCM-led treatment of hepatitis-B / hepatitis-A coinfection with 1983–88 US Western-medicine treatment of the same; China-vs-US mortality came out 1:234.
Second, TCM concerns the functioning of the state and its security.
The 2003 RAND report The Global Threat of New and Reemerging Infectious Diseases flatly says: the threat most states face has shifted from direct military attack by hostile states to "gray-zone" challenges — among them the uncontrolled spread of infectious disease. Although modern science has advanced far, today's disease character and threat are graver than ever — both newly emergent fatal diseases never imagined a few decades ago (AIDS), and diseases once thought contained returning with greater virulence and resistance (TB). This is because modern medical research, in its character and direction, leans more and more toward mass killing of microbes, breaking the precise physiological balance between microbes and humans. Inattention here will be catastrophic for any nation's functioning and security.
The RAND report shows that the United States, from a national-strategic height, is reassessing the limits of Western medicine and the toxicity of Western drugs, seeking a path of harmony between humans and environment.
TCM stresses Heaven and the human as one, holds that humans should live in harmony with nature (microbes, viruses included), and through Chinese medicines, acupuncture and many other means regulates and ignites the body's self-organizing, self-recovering capacity — rather than entering an arms race with bacteria and viruses. This is the future direction of medicine. It is the Chinese nation's tradition; for this reason only China's premier could put forward, at Bandung, the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. China's distinctive philosophy and its approach to disease prevention and treatment — for control of public-health emergencies like SARS, defense against possible future bioterror attack, the strengthening of a strong public-health system, and the building of a great national defense — all have major strategic weight.
Third, TCM is the key to the health-care problem of 1.3 billion people, especially 900 million peasants.
The health of the people is also hard truth. About 90% of rural residents today are an at-the-pocket health group with no insurance. In 1999 our rural poor still numbered 120 million, of whom about 50% were poor or returned to poverty by illness. Rural health coverage has become one of the chief obstacles on the road to a moderately well-off society. Disadvantaged groups' lack of medicine and care cannot be remedied by Western medicine alone. Set aside that the US has begun to see the many flaws of its Western-medicine system and to question its direction — its rising costs alone disqualify Western-style care as the dominant mode for China's care, and especially for rural care. The US, with only 280 million people, spent 1.3 trillion dollars on health in 2000 — 43% of world health spending — yet 15% of Americans still lack basic medical service. Per-capita US health spending is 4,650 dollars; the country has the world's most advanced equipment and technology; misdiagnosis rates exceed 50%; and the vast majority of multi-factor diseases find Western medicine helpless. Therefore the US model of biomedical-led care cannot be exported to the whole world, certainly not to China's 1.3 billion.
TCM is simple, easy, cheap, proven. In preventing and treating chronic disease, complex disease, and new — especially viral — disease, it has special strengths. Today's Western medical communities, the US and UK included, have begun to see TCM's superiority. So only a system of care led by TCM, with TCM and Western medicine of equal weight, can resolve the care problem of China — especially of its peasants and urban poor — and become a model for the world's care.
Fourth, TCM stands at the critical moment between life and death. We do not wish to be the millennium's guilty.
Comrade Wu Yi recently noted: TCM gathers the wisdom of the Chinese nation; it is a science our peoples, through long struggle with disease, have continuously created, accumulated, enriched, and developed.
But for over a hundred years, under the sway of European cultural centrism, TCM has been doubted, excluded, and remade. Since the founding of New China, the former Ministry of Health's He Cheng, Wang Bin, and other leaders wrongly held TCM to be feudal medicine needing complete reshaping. Though they were dismissed, their influence lives on — against the Center's equal weight for Chinese and Western medicine, only Western medicine developed; TCM was to be reshaped and "raised" to Western level.
National TCM workforce: 276,000 in 1949; 334,000 in 2001 — growth of only 21%. Western medicine: 87,000 in 1949; 1.751 million in 2001 — twenty-fold growth, ninety-five times TCM's pace.
In 1999, the country had 10,793 general hospitals; TCM hospitals only 2,449 — ratio about 4:1. TCM hospitals are generally much smaller than Western, and the great majority have long ceased to be real TCM hospitals: heavy reliance on Western tests of no help to TCM diagnosis; Western drugs as first choice; and so on. TCM dares not use TCM means for rescue — should anything go wrong there is no legal cover, while Western means carry no such risk. In recent years TCM has lost its own clinical base and stands as an auxiliary to Western medicine.
In 2003, the country had 136 medical schools — 104 Western, 32 TCM. Ratio 3:1. The TCM schools are small; all are "integrated Chinese-Western" schools, training Western-medicine assistants. Not one is a true TCM school. The graduates basically cannot see patients by TCM thought. In effect we have trained the grave-diggers of TCM.
Today TCM foundational-theory research has lost its master position: most of it uses Western thought, theory, methods, instruments, and equipment to study and verify TCM. Some even sing the "high-pitched" tune of TCM "linking with international standards," driving TCM research to near-total Westernization, so that TCM foundational theory shrinks under alienation and loses its clinical guiding power. Foundational theory's subordinate position gravely impedes TCM's sustainable development. Today, senior TCM with deep skill and special expertise grow ever fewer; the TCM doctors who graduated before 1965 have all retired. TCM-college students enrolled after 1977 are basically at the level of two secondary technical schools combined. If we do not promptly rescue these senior TCMs' knowledge and clinical experience, we lose the last chance.
If TCM continues on this road, in less than 20 years true Chinese medicine and Chinese herbs will no longer exist. If TCM perishes in our generation, we will be the millennium's guilty.
We therefore appeal: list TCM — especially research on TCM foundational theory including the jingluo, and on forecasting and preventing major epidemics — as a major science-and-technology project in the medium-and-long-term plan, for deep research, systematic sorting, continuous refinement on TCM's own laws, and realization of TCM's self-sustainable development. This is not only a great move to inherit and carry forward the fine traditional culture of the Chinese nation; it is also a great move to safeguard the health of 1.3 billion, to build a great national defense, and to let the Chinese nation stand among the world's peoples.