Shameless tangent, China has just booted its most competent respiratory disease epidemiologist from heading epidemic control committee for not backing Xi Jinping's "herbal remedies"
Not to downplay the issue here: there have been reports of doctors being forced to include herbal medicines in the treatment from higher up, despite having little evidence supporting their efficacy. Just a random fact check.
Sources (all in Chinese; note epochtimes doesn't have a particularly good reputation):
[1]: https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/web/fyrbt_673021/t1755063.shtml
It’s up to you to choose which news source to believe, knowing that the former can print anything (including wild speculation) and the later will only print government approved information (including blatant obvious propaganda).
Not simply bad, but like a 180⁰ of the original meaning.
Well, there is rich context to this. Chinese mainland media has been for weeks escalating the "herbal remedies" craze, and Xi somehow managed to insert himself even there.
Now the media (propaganda ministry) can't back off, because Xi will look like an idiot if they are to back off and acknowledge how foolish it is.
For Zhong, a man with a known anti-quackery sentiment, not speaking in single voice with CPC's herbal remedy peddlers, was enough to be seen as somebody not standing in line.
Apparently not just weeks, but for a long time.
Imagine if homeopathy became a point of something the government says we have to see as cultural/national pride. And is prescribed by doctors/hospitals because of that, and scientific analysis has to show the results that also reflect that...
> TCM has never missed a single fight against epidemics throughout Chinese history. TCM classics have provided sufficient evidence of how TCM cured epidemic diseases such as smallpox over the past several thousand years.
I don't have any reason to trust an article from a Taiwanese publication over one from the PRC but the above quote leaves me highly sceptical about the rest of the article.