Viewpoint

05.10.24

Why the African Union Stopped the Donkey Hide Trade with China

Lauren Johnston
The African Union’s unprecedented decision to ban the trade of donkey skin ended a hitherto fast-evolving China-Africa business. It also is the result of an unusual agreement between the 55 African Union member countries on a matter that affects...

Chinese Medicine in the Covid Wards

Ian Johnson from New York Review of Books
In mid-February 2020, during the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, Liu Lihong, a slight man with a wispy beard, made his way into Hankou Hospital No. 8 in Wuhan. Dressed in an all-white infectious disease suit, the only equipment he carried...

Donkey Skin Is the New Ivory

Eric Olander, Cobus van Staden & more
Countries throughout Africa are struggling to figure out how to contain the skyrocketing price of donkeys due to surging demand for the animals in China. Donkey skin is fast becoming an increasingly prized commodity due to its use in a traditional...

China’s Quest to Buy Up Global Supply of Donkeys Halted by African Nations

Katie Forster
Independent
Donkey hide is used to make Chinese remedy ejiao, believed to improve blood circulation

Caixin Media

07.19.16

Killer Knotweed Exposes Dangers of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Amid rising public concerns about side-effects of traditional Chinese medicines, or TCM, following the death of a young woman who died of liver failure last year, a government-backed medical association has started compiling a database of substances...

Nobel Renews Debate on Chinese Medicine

IAN JOHNSON
New York Times
As China basks in its first Nobel Prize in science, few places seem as elated, or bewildered, by the honor as the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences.

Sinica Podcast

10.21.15

Tu Youyou and the Nobel Prize

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, hosts Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn, and David Moser speak with Christina Larson and Ian Johnson about Tu Youyou, the scientist who recently shared a Nobel Prize in Medicine for her discovery of the anti-malaria compound...

Media

10.07.15

An International Victory, Forged in China’s Tumultuous Past

Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian
On October 5, a share of this year’s Nobel Prize in medicine went to 84-year-old Chinese pharmacologist Tu Youyou for her discovery, decades ago, of the anti-malarial drug artemisinin. Tu and her team made the discovery during the Cultural...

The Chinese Government Is Cranking Up the Nationalism After Its Nobel Win

Gwynn Guilford
Quartz
In a way, the Nobel honor is a double-whammy for the Chinese government’s nationalist agenda.

Growing Demand in China for Africa’s Lion Bones

Eric Olander & Cobus van Staden
Traditional Chinese medicine—popular throughout Asia—long has prized the supposed medicinal value of tiger bones. Now, though, as the world’s wild tiger population is disappearing fast, even facing extinction, the Chinese medicine industry may have...

China’s Regulations on Sale of Birth By-product in Chaos

Hu Qingyun
Global Times
In a cramped, quiet room, several bloody placentas sit in a machine, drying. Some workers then ground them down and filled capsules with the viscera. This gory scene is not from a horror movie but the day-to-day business of an underground placenta...

Get Rich or Die Trying: The Chinese Herbal Medicine "Death Sentence" in Uganda

James Wan
Think Africa Press
200,000 Ugandans have signed up to a company believing it will cure all their illnesses and help them make a fortune. But it is more likely to do the opposite.

Caixin Media

12.09.13

Traditional Chinese Medicine Struggling to Find Cure for Regulatory Woes in the U.S.

In November, the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) Fuzheng Huayu Tablets passed the second phase of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) clinical testing.Before this, only one TCM drug had cleared the second of the three phases needed for...

Sinica Podcast

06.29.13

The Fate of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
Bill Bishop swears by part of it. Jeremy Goldkorn swears regularly at it. Chances are you’ve got strong opinions on Traditional Chinese Medicine (T.C.M.) yourself, which is why we’re delighted to be joined by James Palmer this week, author of The...

Caixin Media

09.05.12

Making a Killing on Herbal Medicine

Mushroom gatherers converge and crawl on hillsides in Qinghai province every March while foraging for wild caterpillar fungus.Theirs is not a garden-variety morel hunt. Caterpillar fungus is a hard-to-find parasite that infects and mummifies a host...