Why China’s traditional medicine boom is dangerous

FANG YUAN gazes around his crowded shop and says happily that business is booming. He has a reliable supplier in Russia and hospitals and pharmaceutical companies are queuing up to buy what he sells: antlers. Tangles of them lie in huge meshes on the floor. Thousands more, sliced into discs, fill glass boxes. They are used to treat breast disease in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The shop looks a bit like a Scottish baronial hall. Deer-head trophies gaze down from the walls, as does a red-fronted gazelle with black horns like scimitars. “I don’t sell those,” he says hastily. “Endangered list.”

Mr Fang is a trader at the world’s largest market for TCM, a system of diagnosis and treatment that goes back 2,500 years. The scale of the business is staggering. The small town where the market is located, Bozhou, is three hours drive from the nearest railway station. Yet the main market (pictured) is the size of a football stadium. Mr Fang is one of almost 10,000 traders—four times as many as there are shops in the colossal Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.