A Strategy for Chinese Medicine's Entry into the United States
Chengdu Longtan Hospital · Deng Wanfa
First, this must be made clear: the day the United States recognizes Chinese medicine is the day Chinese medicine flourishes in the American market.
American law is built on Western culture and Western science. To make Chinese medicine legal in the United States now is plainly impossible.
In the United States Chinese medicine is held to be unorthodox medicine. To press Chinese medicine onto the market under a "legal" identity is to fail to read the times. And "modernized, industrialized" Chinese medicine not only fails to win that recognition; it also damages TCM's original form. Whatever Chinese medicine can today win American recognition is no longer Chinese medicine — it is only another kind of Western drug. To Westernize Chinese medicine to fit the present market is not in the long-term interest of the Chinese nation.
For Chinese medicine to walk into the world, the pressing task is for us ourselves to recognize that Chinese medicine is itself a science — another science, distinct from Western culture-science. Once we so recognize, we have the strength to push the strengths of Chinese medicine outward.
Everything is hardest at the beginning. The hardness here is that they do not know Chinese medicine, so its legal status is not granted by their government and law. At that point we have only the wise course: enter through informal, popular, point-to-area channels. Even study how Western culture-science and its products entered the gates of China, how they so quickly captured China's market — these patterns are worth studying. Especially this should be stressed: the root of Chinese medicine is in the people, its life is in the people. Only when the great majority of the people accept Chinese medicine, the formal recognition of state and law will follow. By then to put on TCM's legal cloak is not too late.
Meanwhile, another point deserves weight: Chinese medicine is the product of Chinese culture. What we first push out is that culture, not the medicine. If they accept our culture, they will naturally accept the medicine of that culture. So we should use every means and channel to spread the culture of Chinese medicine. Turning the spiritual wealth of Chinese culture into material wealth as our channel of benefit is the way to proceed.