🌿 Folk Prescriptions

— Interview with Expert Advisory Committee Member Zou Jieming
During the 2003 SARS outbreak, traditional Chinese medicine played a unique role under special circumstances, prompting renewed reflection on TCM. How to promote traditional TCM culture and achieve innovation and development? Journalists conducted the following dialogue with Professor Zou Jieming, member of the Expert Advisory Committee of the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine and member of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia Commission.
TCM Culture Needs Both Inheritance and Innovation

Journalist: How do you perceive the current predicament of TCM? Where lies its way forward?
Zou Jieming: Traditional Chinese medicine is a treasure of the Chinese nation. With changes in human living conditions, environment, and modern medical models, coupled with drug-induced diseases caused by synthetic chemicals, there is now a global call for "naturalness" and "returning to simplicity." Therefore, TCM—with its thousands of years of clinical practice and complete theoretical system—will play an increasingly important role in promoting human health, facing great opportunities for development.
However, it must be acknowledged that in recent years, TCM development has indeed declined. Some excellent therapies are on the verge of extinction, some renowned elderly physicians lack successors, TCM clinics are gradually westernized, there is a shortage of TCM talent, and research standards remain low. Moreover, the development of TCM patent medicines faces issues such as unstable raw material quality and low-level repetition. This shows that, like Peking Opera, TCM as an ancient culture needs not only inheritance but also innovation—must keep pace with modern society and economic development, adapt to modern science and management, and continuously meet modern people’s new demands for healthcare.
TCM Must Develop Without Becoming Westernized
Journalist: The ultimate path for TCM lies in keeping pace with the times and continuous innovation—does this mean TCM should align with Western medicine, or even "westernize"?
Zou Jieming: No. First, we must clearly understand that TCM development cannot deviate from its own theoretical foundations—this is the premise and core. At the same time, we must recognize that times are advancing, science is progressing, and people’s expectations of TCM are evolving too. We must not only know "what" but also "why"—that is, both TCM theories and successful diagnostic and therapeutic practices need explanation and expression using modern science and medicine. They require proof via advanced modern technological means and must be based on reality, applying advanced modern scientific knowledge and technology to improve, enrich, and develop TCM theory, diagnosis, and treatment. These are essential tasks for TCM modernization.
All sciences and disciplines evolve alongside social and economic progress. Western medicine has constantly absorbed and borrowed advanced knowledge and technologies from related fields, enabling its rapid advancement. Similarly, TCM has developed over the past two millennia through practical experience. But in the future, it urgently needs to accelerate absorption and application of modern scientific knowledge and advanced technologies—including those from Western medicine—to complement strengths and weaknesses, continuously enrich and develop itself—not "westernization."
TCM and Western medicine are two distinct medical systems, both scientific, each with unique advantages. Western medicine cannot, nor should it, dominate everything. Denying TCM as science while recognizing only Western medicine as science is clearly wrong. Equally unacceptable is the view held by some: "Even if TCM can cure diseases Western medicine cannot, it is still unscientific because it doesn’t conform to Western medical models." Therefore, just as we should not evaluate TCM within the framework of Western medicine, we should not force TCM into the evaluation system or trajectory of Western medicine.
TCM Needs Innovation in Theory and Practice
Journalist: How should TCM innovate?
Zou Jieming: TCM has two major characteristics and strengths—holistic concept and syndrome differentiation. "Compound prescriptions" are the primary means of syndrome differentiation. We must inherit tradition without being bound by antiquity, innovate without losing our roots. We should preserve the essence of traditional TCM theory, eliminate outdated elements unsuitable for modern society, and use modern advanced technology to interpret, improve, and develop traditional TCM theory, diagnosis, and treatment, forming a modern TCM theoretical system and modern diagnostic and therapeutic system.
In practice, the biggest challenge for TCM is summarizing clinical patterns and elevating TCM treatment experience to standardized treatment levels, making it easier for more people to grasp and understand—transforming individual, ad hoc "artisanal operations" into standardized "production processes." Research institutions and enterprise technical centers should strive to develop modern TCM patent medicines with good efficacy, safety, and controllable quality. These should be formulated under TCM theory, produced using modern advanced technology, processed according to modern scientific standards, and turned into safe, effective, quality-controlled TCM preparations. Their functions and indications may be expressed using both traditional Chinese and Western medical terminology, facilitating legal entry into international pharmaceutical markets, achieving clear pharmacological mechanisms, identifiable active ingredients, advanced preparation processes, and controllable quality. This is an urgent task for TCM practitioners.
The most pressing need today is a large number of dedicated TCM professionals—scholars, doctors, entrepreneurs—working together to advance this cause.
Journalist: What do you believe is the ultimate goal of developing and innovating TCM?
Zou Jieming: First, protect the health of 1.3 billion Chinese people; second, enable Chinese medicine and herbs to legally enter international markets and benefit people worldwide.