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Book Review
| The Marketing of Traditional Medicines in China: The Case of Guangxi Province. By Du Liping (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005, ISBN 0-7734-6046-2) 277 pp.
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| The title of Du Liping's book The Marketing of Traditional Medicines in China might at first glance suggest the active promotion and use of traditional Chinese medicine in China's health system, and perhaps even beyond its national borders. The focus of Du Liping's study is however more concerned with the trading systems that surround the use of traditional Chinese medicines, and Du attempts to analyse, with particular attention to the province of Guangxi, the environmental, cultural, economic, and political influences of this trade from the late Qing period up to the present. Although the book is primarily an economic study, and not about traditional Chinese medicine per se, Du's conceptualisation of traditional Chinese medicine reveals certain common misconceptions about what precisely is traditional Chinese medicine, and in turn calls into question some of his arguments and conclusions. |
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One of the principal arguments that Du makes in his study is that traditional Chinese medicines are commodities unlike other commodities such as vegetables or timber. One aspect of traditional medicines is that their production is more environmentally conditioned than other agricultural products. Moreover, as Du argues, the demand for Chinese herbal medicines is generally inelastic. This means that regardless of their costs the demand for traditional Chinese medicines remains the same or, in other words, that buyers' reactions to price changes are relatively insignificant. Du claims this inelasticity is due to the fact that 'people will not buy medicines (no matter what the prices are) unless they are sick' (229). Here lies perhaps the major misconception that Du holds regarding traditional Chinese medicines— that is, that Chinese herbal medicines are easily discernible as a category separate from other agricultural products. However, within the practice of traditional Chinese herbal medicine, food is medicine. Many Chinese herbal medicines such as red dates, gingko nuts, yams, taro, lotus seeds, barley, wolfberries, hawthorne fruit, mandarine peels, are frequently used as everyday dietary items to be bought not only in herbal dispensaries but also in vegetable markets and supermarkets. Rather than used only during times of illness Chinese herbs are eaten at ceremonial, celebratory, and festive occasions, not to mention ordinary occasions of wining and dining. In this respect, when food is medicine, Du's category of traditional Chinese medicines becomes problematic and his characterisation of the demand for traditional Chinese medicines as inelastic also becomes questionable. |
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Du also categorises traditional Chinese herbal medicines as broadly having a high ratio of value to weight. As a general statement of fact this is simply untenable considering the vast range of herbal medicines, whether they be plant, mineral, or animal. Certainly the price for wild ginseng may be very high, but the value of common dandelion is invariably inexpensive. |
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Given the study's focus on marketing systems and traders, readers might find it somewhat strange that the role which traditional medical practitioners play in influencing the demand for certain medicines is given scarcely any attention. Those readers less interested in the changes that have occurred in the marketing of traditional Chinese medicines will, however, find some of Du's observations regarding business ethics employed by individual traders worth the read. While relationships based on personal trust in the marketplaces of traditional herbal medicines would seem to be alive and well in Du's study of Guangxi, the study nevertheless mentions that fake or illegal substitution of herbal medicines is also rife in the business. |
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Despite some questionable points of methodology, and the need for greater refinement in describing precisely what his category of traditional Chinese medicines is, and thus properly delimiting his study, The Marketing of Traditional Medicines in China makes a valuable contribution as an economic history of traditional Chinese medicine and its marketing systems since the late Qing dynasty. |
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| RHONDA CHANG
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| UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY |
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