Guideline issued to bolster TCM

The Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council have issued a guideline to improve the development of traditional Chinese medicine.

TCM hospitals and other institutions should improve their capacities, according to the guideline.

TCM services should include disease prevention, treatment and rehabilitation, and should be universally accessible and cover the whole span of a human life.

TCM services should also be consolidated at the grassroots level.

Colleges should enroll more students from rural areas to major in TCM who promise to go back to work after graduation. Conditions for promotion should be relaxed for TCM physicians who have been working at the grassroots level for a long time.

There should also be a sound training system of TCM knowledge and skills for general practitioners as well as doctors in rural areas.

The guideline also calls for the construction of databases of digital TCM medical records and prescriptions, as well as online TCM hospitals as part of measures to digitize TCM services.

TCM should play fully to its advantages in treatment of diseases including bone injuries, pediatrics, gynecology and cardiovascular diseases, and establish its own approaches in treating such diseases, the guideline said.

Family physicians are encouraged to provide TCM services to prevent diseases.

The guideline also urges efforts to enhance the quality of TCM ingredients and related medicines, and to strengthen the development of TCM talent.

The country should work to rediscover and carry on the essence of TCM through efforts such as improving research in TCM classic literature. Scientific research and innovation in the field should also be sped up.

Premier Li signs decree to boost business environment

Premier Li Keqiang has signed a decree for a regulatory law to improve the business environment, which will take effect on Jan 1.

The draft of the law was passed in a State Council executive meeting earlier this month.

China is continuing its campaign to streamline administrative procedures, as well as efforts to reduce governments' direct distribution of market resources and their direct intervention in market activities, the law said.

Governments at various levels and their departments should uphold transparency in their affairs, and work to make their decision-making, policy implementation and services known to the public, according to the regulation.

Also, the country will speed up efforts to build a modern market system that is unified, open, competitive and orderly, promote the free flow of all kinds of factors of production according to law, and guarantee that all market entities compete in a fair manner, it said.

The country will keep on easing market access and implement a nationwide negative-list system for market access, it said. As for business areas that are not on the list, all market entities can enter the areas equally in accordance with the law.

The regulation also requires government departments to strengthen enforcement of anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition laws, among other stipulations.