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The Chinese patent medicine industry has witnessed fast growth in recent years, with its present annual sales hitting 40 billion yuan (about US$4.8 billion), almost 40 times the figure reported two decades ago.
Ren Dequan, deputy director of the Chinese State Drug Administration, made the announcement at an international seminar on herbal medicine recently held in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province.
About 70 percent of the medicinal herbs in China are now used to make patent medicine, instead of just being processed into prepared pieces for decoction, as they were twenty years ago, Ren said.
Nowadays, China has more than 100 Chinese patent medicine plants whose annual sales exceed 100 million yuan, and about a dozen of them even reported 100 million US dollars in their annual sales.
As China opens further to the outside world, Chinese patent medicine will be embraced by more overseas consumers and seize a larger international market, Ren said.
(Xinhua News Agency October 26, 2001)
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