Comment by baybal2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by baybal2 | Hacker News Reader

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Worse, a double digit chunk of population in China not only doesn't believe in Western medicine, but Western medical science as such, like really not believing in microbes...

Unlike the popular notion, it's not only the "cultural revolution generation" of 60+ people. The amount of weird people believing in all kinds of cults, antivaxing, and trying treating cancers with yoga and unicorn poo peak in people in their forties.

China is a picture of society where the type of loonies like "new agers" have won. TCM now gets peddled from Chinese state TV, just like a certain yoga practice was 20 years ago.

When it will pass the boiling point, I feel TCM peddlers will get steamrolled just like them, but that's not gonna happen while Xi is standing in for it. Yes, Xi believes in TCM

TCM, I assume, means Traditional Chinese Medicine.

I am not surprised that traditional Chinese medicine gets advertised in China.

I would be very surprised if they started advertising traditional Indian medicine there though.

The thing is it has never been in that position to begin with. Out of hand quackery is a relatively new phenomenon.

Even just 20 years ago, "TCM" was still considered something only lunatical old people do.

But then China opened, and new wave of weird novelties deluged the society: "new age" cults, antivaxers, hipsters, gurus, psychodelics, psychics, antiscience and other stuff like that.

The contemporary brand of quackery has gotten into mainland China from... Hongkong out of all places.

Back in times when just anything Honkongese was considered super cool in the mainland, quack pharmacies that were treated like jokes in HK somehow managed to slip in, and became the new fascination of Chinese nouveau riche, and a token sign for their "sophistication"

And then over the time, it turned to out into what it is now, now being believed in quite seriously

Nitpick but the capitalisation is important. TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) is not just traditional medicine from China, it was a concerted state effort by Mao to modernise and standardise it, drawing from various local and traditional methods. Notably it was developed to create standard cultural identity and also notably, he did not use it himself.

Ayurveda and TCM are actually extremely similar in theory.

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