Ren Dequan, former deputy director of State Food and Drug Administration confirmed that China still ranks first in its exporting of traditional Chinese medicine, regarding former reports as saying the export of traditional Chinese medicine from Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) has amounted to 80 percent of the total.

    Currently, China's yearly export of traditional Chinese medicine is around 700 million US dollars, the paper quoted Ren assaying.

    The ROK's yearly export is over 100 million US dollars, and much of it is of Korean ginseng, the paper said.

    Japan's yearly export is less than 10 million US dollars, according to the paper.

    In recent years, the traditional Chinese medicine industry of China developed rapidly, with an annual increase around 17 to 18 percent and the total output that reached 80 billion yuan (10 billion US dollars) last year, the paper reported.

    Compared with the total output, China's export of traditional Chinese medicine is relatively low, Ren stressed.

    Traditional Chinese medicine has spread out of Asia in real sense due to geographic distance in the past and extant cultural differences, he said.