Welcoming the Spring of TCM Higher Education
On 18 January at the opening of the new century, the Beijing Haidian Walk-Study University and the Beijing Cui Yueli Center for Traditional Medicine jointly convened a "Symposium on Innovation in TCM Higher Education." Senior TCM specialists Jiao Shude and Ji Liangchen, senior pharmacology specialist Jin Shiyuan, TCM education and theory specialists Lu Guangshen, Li Guangjun, Fan Zhenglun, and over twenty more — including responsible comrades from the State Administration of TCM, the Beijing TCM Administration, and the Beijing Education Commission — attended.
The participants soberly assessed the present state of TCM higher education and pointed out that to a measurable degree it has drifted from the laws governing the cultivation of high-level TCM talent. For many years it has not produced TCM practitioners that satisfy, so that the TCM workforce now faces a serious shortage of successors. China's need for true high-level TCM talent is now extremely pressing; the scarcity of TCM talent grows by the day. This scarcity has gravely stalled the development of the TCM enterprise, weakened the role TCM ought to play in our national economy, and dragged on the pace at which TCM is reaching the world.
While pointing out the problem, participants analyzed the distinctive character of TCM education. TCM higher education must train people who can not only see patients and see them well, but who also dare see them — dare meet acute and grave cases; people with real skill, with the capacity to solve real problems; people of insight, possessing TCM's particular mode of thought and philosophy; people who carry the Chinese cultural tradition forward and who, more than that, open the frontier of the science of life. TCM higher education must follow TCM's own laws — there is no ready road here; only we, TCM ourselves, can chart it. If we can raise such people, we will have sown the seed of TCM's development. Seeds need not be many — every seed, if it is a seed, will flower and bear fruit.
Participants discussed a TCM higher-education model combining five elements: talent-based selection, mentor-transmission, foundational teaching, classic study, and clinical practice. They warmly praised the foresight of Beijing Haidian Walk-Study University in seizing the moment, breaking the mould, and daring to innovate in TCM higher education. They charged Beijing Haidian Walk-Study University and the Beijing Cui Yueli Center for Traditional Medicine with further discussion and implementation, aiming to have a first cohort enrolled this year.
Participants are confident in TCM's future, and joyful at the first dawn-light already visible. The development of TCM is the hope of the older revolutionary generation, the need of today's reform and opening, and the longing of people across the world. China's contribution to the world — TCM weighs heavily in it. Only what is national is what is global. TCM will, for the carrying-forward of the Chinese nation's spirit, for China's standing among the world's peoples, shed new light and offer new contribution.