Longxi county in Gansu province is ramping up efforts to promote the inheritance and development of traditional Chinese medicine through such efforts as the standardization of medicinal plant cultivation, processing, raw material storage, product testing and branding.

A picturesque view in Longxi county in Gansu province. [Photo/China Daily]

Longxi has abundant traditional Chinese medicinal resources and a history of medicinal planting cultivation dating back more than 1,000 years.

It is the largest planting, storage and trading center of traditional Chinese medicinal materials in northwestern China, cultivating and distributing authentic medicinal materials such as Astragalus membranaceus, a traditional Chinese herb, and Codonopsis pilosula, known as dangshen in Chinese.

In 2022, the total output value of the traditional Chinese medicine industry in the county reached 46.01 billion yuan ($6.28 billion).

Longxi has formulated 22 standards for the quality, cultivation and techniques of authentic medicinal materials such as Codonopsis pilosula, Astragalus membranaceus and Scutellaria baicalensis.

They are recognized as local standards for traditional Chinese medicinal materials in Gansu.

The county encourages enterprises to build a system of seed breeding and medicine source bases through land transfer and the model of "leading enterprises, villages, cooperatives, bases and farmers".

This year, Longxi plans to build 39 green planting bases for traditional Chinese medicinal materials with a total area of over 2,800 hectares, 24 key demonstration bases covering 1,033 hectares and a seed breeding base with an area of 3,867 hectares.

With an investment of 3.5 billion yuan, the Traditional Chinese Medicine Circular Economy Industrial Park in Longxi has introduced 27 traditional Chinese medicine processing enterprises such as Sinopharm, Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Holdings Ltd, Gansu Qizheng Tibetan Medicine and Chenland.

Another is the Longxi Traditional Chinese Medicine Industry Incubation Park, which has attracted 23 traditional Chinese medicine processing enterprises.

There are 54 large-scale traditional Chinese medicine processing enterprises in the county, including one national enterprise, 16 provincial-level companies and four "specialized, refined, special and new "enterprises. Longxi is home to 27 pharmaceutical wholesale enterprises, 138 pharmaceutical retail enterprises and 3,800 individual processing households.

Longxi has a climate that is dry but not arid, and that is cool but not shady. It is thus a natural cool warehouse, which is suitable for storing medicinal materials in their natural state.

Longxi attracts enterprises to invest in the development of traditional Chinese medicine storage and logistics; and supports local storage enterprises in transforming traditional storage facilities, using technologies such as irradiation sterilization, low-temperature drying and infrared drying to ensure the quality and safety of materials.

Currently, there are 130 storage enterprises in the county, including 35 enterprises with a storage capacity of over metric 1,000 tons. Longxi has a static storage capacity of 1.1 million tons and can store more than 320 varieties with an annual turnover of 2 million tons.

Market trading

Shouyang town is a medicinal herb trading market that trades 500,000 tons of raw herbs and medicinal slices annually, with a transaction value reaching billions of yuan.

It integrates a public service center, traditional Chinese medicine trading shops, raw herb trading greenhouses and medicine slice exhibition halls.

In particular, the Gansu Medicinal Herb Trading Center went online and started operating in January 2018.

It trades 44 varieties both online and offline and has been listed as a pilot enterprise for national supply chain innovation and application. Currently, the county has established 23 kinds of traditional Chinese medicine trading markets, three e-commerce trading platforms for medicinal herbs, 13 professional information service websites and more than 440 individual online stores.

Product testing

The construction of a traceability system is an important guarantee for controlling the quality of medicinal herbs.

An information platform for the traceability and quality safety of medicinal herbs has been established in 26 locations and the first phase of the Longxi Traditional Chinese Medicine Big Data Application Platform has been put into operation, achieving the management, traceability and display of data throughout the entire industry chain.

Branding

With an investment of 500 million yuan, the 45,000-square-meter Silk Road China (Gansu) Chinese Medicine Expo Park has been built and designated as the permanent venue for the China (Gansu) Traditional Chinese Medicine Industry Expo. Longxi has been named "China's Astragalus Hometown "and "National Famous Brand Demonstration Zone for the Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs: Astragalus and Codonopsis".