The Chinese system of traditional medicine has been practised for more than 2,000 years. It involves a whole range of practices including herbal medicine, acupuncture, acupressure, heat application and Chinese massage. Traditional medicines are estimated to make up around 20-30% of the pharmaceutical market in China, and attempts to modernise and standardise them have been gathering pace. Over the past 50 years in particular, the practise has been thoroughly modernised with standard drug formulations and increased scientific research aimed at understanding how it all works.

Over the past few decades, the education of practitioners of traditional medicine has changed from the master-to-disciple mode to a more modern university-based system. Today, there are more than 200,000 students studying traditional medicine in 33 universities and colleges across China.

Since 1985, all traditional medicines have needed approval from the authorities in order to be produced or sold. There is a class system to describe the type of drug being administered: class 1 drugs are equivalent to western phamaceuticals, ie those where the active ingredient is a single molecule; class 2 drugs are well-defined formulations of herbs where more than half the mixture is a defined active ingredient; and class 3 is a mixture that has been proven to be effective by clinical trials but has no defined active ingredient. Most of the herbal medicines available in traditional Chinese medicine fall into this last category.

Of particular interest to western doctors are the 5,000 or more medicinal plants identified by practioners of Chinese traditional medicine. Today, both traditional and western medicines are used in Chinese hospitals.