On Mao Ze-dong’s Contribution to the Innovative Development of Traditional Chinese Medicine:Value Assessment and Contemporary Revelation
(Sheng Hai-ying and Wang Sheng)
He objectively evaluated the status and role of TCM by arguing that it has a bearing on people’s livelihood and the self-confidence of the Chinese nation,or in other words one of the important reasons why the Chinese nation is able to prosper and thrive;he promoted the movement of learning TCM in Western medicine circles by establishing institutions for teaching and researching Chinese medicine and publishing books on Chinese medicine,and corrected the mistakes of the health sector in discriminating against and restricting Chinese medicine;Mao pointed out the way for the innovative development of TCM by making“uniting Chinese and Western medicine”an important guideline for national health work.He advocated that Chinese medicine and Western medicine should be organically integrated instead of replacing TCM with Western medicine,and that the laws of TCM should be studied by modern Western science in order to develop new medicine in China.Practice has shown that TCM has played a very important role in the fight against the COVID-19 epidemic,which has been recognized by WHO and raised the awareness of overseas audience.