Amélioration des normes + traçabilité sur toute la chaîne : plusieurs représentants du secteur de la médecine traditionnelle chinoise proposent des mesures pour améliorer la qualité à la source des matières premières de la médecine traditionnelle chinoise, franchissant la "dernière kilomètre" | Regards économiques des deux sessions

Finance China News, March 7th (Reporter Zhang Liande) Traditional Chinese medicine is a treasure of Chinese civilization and an important support for building a Healthy China. The quality of raw medicinal materials is fundamental to the high-quality development of the TCM industry. At this year’s National People’s Congress, several national representatives from the Chinese medicine sector offered suggestions on quality construction, focusing on upgrading quality standards and improving the traceability system across the entire industry chain. They proposed a series of targeted recommendations to address industry pain points and help establish the “last mile” of raw material quality control.

Lu Qingguo, a National People’s Congress representative and Chairman of Morning Light Biotech, told Finance China News: “Despite the high level of national attention, current standards for Chinese medicinal materials and proprietary Chinese medicines still face prominent bottlenecks such as ‘low thresholds, broad indicators, and slow updates.’ The widespread phenomenon of meeting only minimum standards has significantly weakened the quality assurance role of pharmacopoeias. Therefore, improving quality standards for medicinal materials and proprietary medicines is crucial for protecting consumer rights, maintaining market order, and making rational use of medicinal resources.”

In response to these issues, Lu Qingguo brought multiple relevant suggestions to this year’s two sessions. In the proposal titled “Suggestions for Fully Improving Quality Standards of Chinese Medicinal Materials and Proprietary Chinese Medicines to Promote High-Quality Development of the TCM Industry,” he recommended comprehensively raising quality standards, using authentic medicinal material producing areas with medium or higher quality as benchmarks, significantly increasing the effective ingredient content standards in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, and improving multi-component, all-dimensional quality indicator systems. He also suggested establishing a transition period to guide cultivation towards advantageous producing areas and eliminate low-quality capacity in unsuitable regions. Additionally, led by the National Medical Products Administration, standards for proprietary Chinese medicines should be revised based on clinical value, strengthening full-process quality control from source to finished product to prevent waste and mismatching of high-quality resources, thereby maintaining a fair market environment.

Xu Haoyu, Secretary of the Party Committee, Chairman, and President of Yangtze River Pharmaceutical Group, told Finance China News: “The quality of Chinese medicinal materials directly concerns public medication safety and the vitality of the industry. We need not only to increase quantity but also to optimize and improve quality.”

During his research, Xu Haoyu found that although the scale of the Chinese medicinal materials industry continues to expand, quality chaos still restricts industry development. He proposed accelerating the construction of a full-chain quality credit assurance system for the medicinal materials industry. He suggested building a high-starting-point, systematic national regional smart ecological planting demonstration zone in seven major medicinal material producing areas nationwide, strengthening germplasm resource protection, promoting smart planting models, and supporting storage and logistics infrastructure. He also recommended establishing a nationwide integrated database of quality credit profiles for market entities, improving mechanisms for trust incentives and dishonesty penalties, and reinforcing the foundation of medicinal material quality from the source.

Zhao Jing, Vice Chairman of Boshang Pharmaceutical, focused on building an information traceability system for the entire TCM industry chain. She proposed “Suggestions for Strengthening the Entire Industry Chain Information Traceability and Accelerating the Scientific Development of the TCM Traceability System.” She emphasized the need to accelerate the construction of a comprehensive industry chain traceability system covering seeds, planting, processing, and production and circulation of proprietary Chinese medicines, promoting close integration of upstream and downstream industry segments, and supporting the high-end, intelligent, and green transformation of the TCM industry. Zhao Jing noted that the current Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s platform for traceability of TCM quality covers 21 provinces and cities and 113 commonly used medicinal materials, with Yunnan and other regions forming characteristic traceability benchmarks. However, issues such as source data distortion, inconsistent standards, and “information silos” still exist.

She proposed five specific suggestions: improve top-level national policy design and issue dedicated traceability management measures; develop national standards for TCM decoction pieces traceability, standardizing coding and data formats; build a national integrated traceability data platform to enable nationwide information connectivity; establish a long-term “government-industry-university-research-application” mechanism, strengthen third-party evaluation and social supervision; and cultivate digital and intelligent transformation enterprises in the TCM industry to empower the entire chain. She also suggested promoting the deep integration of artificial intelligence with the entire TCM industry chain to create an “AI + Blockchain” smart circulation ecosystem, enabling full lifecycle traceability from planting to circulation.

The suggestions from various representatives focus on different aspects but complement each other, forming a comprehensive development approach for the TCM industry—from source quality control and standard improvement to full industry chain traceability—highly aligned with the development requirements of “inheritance of essence, adherence to integrity, and innovation.”

With the gradual implementation of relevant policies and the practical exploration of leading enterprises, a new pattern of high-quality development of the TCM industry based on quality, data, and traceability is accelerating. This will further promote the deep integration of TCM with industry and commerce, enabling traditional Chinese medicine to better safeguard people’s health.