China leading traditional Chinese medicine exporter

China is still ranked first in the export of traditional Chinese medicine, the China Youth Daily reported here Wednesday.
Ren Dequan, former deputy director of State Food and Drug Administration confirmed that China still ranks first in its exporting of traditional Chinese medicine, regarding former reports as saying the export of traditional Chinese medicine from Japan and South Korea has amounted to 80 percent of the total.

Currently, China's yearly export of traditional Chinese medicine is around US$700 million, the paper quoted Ren assaying.

South Korea's yearly export is over US$100 million, and much of it is of Korean ginseng, the paper said.

Japan's yearly export is less than US$10 million, according to the paper.

In recent years, the traditional Chinese medicine industry of China developed rapidly, with an annual increase around 17 to 18 percent and the total output that reached 80 billion yuan (US$10 billion) last year, the paper reported.

Compared with the total output, China's export of traditional Chinese medicine is relatively low, Ren stressed.

Traditional Chinese medicine has spread out of Asia in real sense due to geographic distance in the past and extant cultural differences, he said.


From Chinadaily.com.cn