ABSTRACT
This chapter explores processes and tensions at work in the “traditional” Chinese (Traditional Chinese Medicine [TCM]) drug industry through the case study of a medium-sized pharmaceutical laboratory located in China. It argues that today’s TCM drug industry has been fundamentally molded by Mao’s dictum to “combine Chinese and Western medicines,” but in ways that could not have been anticipated when that policy was announced in the 1950s. While Chinese pharmaceutical research may reference classical prescriptions or create new formulas which follow Chinese medical principles and rules, biomedical lab practice and scientific protocols ultimately dictate research and development processes. Products marketed as TCM make no reference to the laboratory, yet the location of boundaries between “tradition” and “innovation,” and “Chinese” and “Western” ways of making and knowing, remain live concerns in the world of Chinese pharmaceuticals, and even run through laboratory protocols and state regulations. Beginning with the context of Mao’s China, and combining archival research with ethnographic data, I trace such boundary-making into the present-day with a case study of Guangzhou Huahai Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd, a leading TCM drug company with a focus on new drug discovery.
