BUCHAREST -- It has been a busy six months for the Chinese ambassador to Romania.
Among the institutions that Han Chunlin has visited during his travels around Romania, the envoy made stops at two of Romania's top medical universities to promote one of his government’s more unassuming ways to build cultural influence abroad: traditional Chinese medicine.
While the details of the closed-door discussions between the ambassador and representatives of these universities are not fully known, the diplomatic outreach by Han and the Chinese Embassy in Bucharest is achieving results in Romania.
Both the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest (UMF Bucharest) and the Grigore T. Popa University of Medicine and Pharmacy In Iasi (UMF Iasi), which are home to some of Romania’s most respected medical programs, have been organizing traditional Chinese medicine events for years for staff and students, as well as paid study trips to China, and both universities offer courses on it, with UMF Iasi set to launch such classes in the fall.
Other medical programs at Romanian universities, such as Transylvania University of Brasov and Vasile Goldis Western University of Arad have also embraced traditional Chinese medicine in their curriculum, with Brasov offering a specialized master’s degree and Arad operating a traditional Chinese medicine center on campus.
The inroads made by the steady engagement of Chinese officials marks a success story for Beijing’s official efforts to strengthen its soft power abroad and promote traditional Chinese medicine, which centers around practices like acupuncture, tai chi, and the use of herbal remedies to treat health problems.
In Romania, this push for influence in the medical field has also found fertile ground amid decades of funding cuts, low pay for doctors, and other problems that have undermined public trust in the national health-care service and left the country with one of the European Union’s lowest ranked systems.
“The health system is discredited and when you have a certain mistrust the public attitude toward the generally accepted medical treatments becomes tied to the shortcomings of the broader medical system,” Stefan Popescu, a former state secretary at the Romanian Foreign Ministry, told RFE/RL.
“China’s promotion of traditional Chinese medicine should be seen as part of a broader constellation of initiatives that [Beijing] uses to deepen cooperation with countries,” Popescu said. “It also highlights Chinese traditions in a way that puts them in opposition to the West.”
In April, UMF Iasi became the first Romanian medical university to host a Confucius Institute, a Chinese cultural-education center that is administered by an organization under the purview of China’s Education Ministry. The stated aim of the centers is to promote Chinese language and culture, but they’ve also faced criticism over attempts to stifle academic freedom and using improper influence on teaching and research.
Speaking at the launch of the Confucius Institute in April, UMF Iasi Rector Viorel Scripcariu said that, in addition to teaching Chinese, the center could also help integrate and expand “professional skills training activities in the field of traditional Chinese medicine,” a sentiment that was also shared by Han in his public comments.
Following the institute’s inauguration, Han met that same month with Viorel Jinga, the rector of UMF Bucharest, where the two discussed “the future of collaboration in traditional Chinese medicine,” according to a written response provided to RFE/RL from Jinga’s office.
The Chinese Embassy in Bucharest did not reply to RFE/RL’s request for comment about the meetings or its efforts to promote traditional Chinese medicine in the country.
'A National Treasure’
While the efforts of Chinese diplomats in Romania show some of the latest attempts to promote traditional medicine abroad, its importance to Chinese foreign policy was unveiled in Beijing nearly eight years ago.
Traditional Chinese medicine has been part of the country’s foreign medical aid for decades, but its standing has been boosted under the tenure of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who often refers to the collection of practices that date back thousands of years as a “national treasure” in his public speeches.
Under Xi, Beijing launched a global campaign in 2016 that has since gathered pace with an official white paper and a law on traditional Chinese medicine aimed at promoting it worldwide.
The effort received a major boost in 2019 when the World Health Organization (WHO) included traditional Chinese medicine in its influential global diagnostic compendium, the International Classification of Diseases -- a move that was criticized as anti-scientific and potentially harmful by many, including influential industry publications such as Scientific American and Nature, who said there was little evidence that these practices provided effective treatment.
Traditional Chinese medicine has been lumped into important Chinese global projects like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and Beijing has launched a series of scholarships to sponsor foreign students to study the discipline in China. It also featured prominently in China’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with its practices recommended domestically as part of a treatment plan for the virus. Traditional Chinese pharmaceuticals were also included in foreign aid provided during the pandemic.
The promotion of traditional Chinese medicine also has a commercial dimension to it -- including an expanding multibillion-dollar market inside China and a growing international one -- which adds extra impetus to its ongoing health diplomacy around the world.
“China’s strategy [with traditional Chinese medicine] has the potential to be much more effective than other soft power efforts because it is high-visibility and medicine is needed everywhere in the world,” Popescu said.
Inroads At UMF Iasi
The new Confucius Institute in Iasi is the fifth such center in Romania and it aims to become a platform for the promotion of Chinese culture in the eastern Romanian city and across the country.
Reaching this point is the result of years of work by Scripcaru, the rector of UMF Iasi, who has been courting Chinese cooperation since as early as 2019, when he announced a partnership agreement with the Shaanxi University of Chinese Medicine, which he said would be a launching pad for traditional Chinese medicine at the university.
“We hope to bring to UMF Iasi the spirit of traditional Chinese medicine, which not only involves medicine, but also the understanding of the culture of one of the most valuable civilizations in the world,” Scripcaru said in a statement then.
Scripcaru has continued to forge ahead and has worked closely with Chinese officials over the years. A few days before the opening of the Confucius Institute in April, UMF Iasi concluded another agreement with the Kunming University of Medicine in southern China, which provides for “bilateral cooperation in the field of education and research.”
In response to questions from RFE/RL, Scripcaru said the Confucius Institute is part of the process of “internationalizing the university” and that the expansion of new courses on traditional Chinese medicine are the result of guidance from the World Federation for Medical Education, an NGO focused on the training and education of doctors worldwide, which advised the university to adopt the discipline as part of its alternative-medicine curriculum.
“By integrating traditional Chinese medicine into the curriculum, UMF Iasi can offer students a more diverse knowledge of global medical practices. Also, over time, more than 250 students have expressed their interest in learning the Chinese language and learning about Chinese culture,” Scripcaru's office said in a written statement to RFE/RL.
“The decision to open the Confucius Institute and to introduce an optional course in traditional Chinese medicine was taken solely out of the desire to enrich the educational offer and expand the academic horizons of our students and researchers,” the statement continued.
The campaign to promote traditional Chinese medicine by UMF Iasi continued in June 2024 when a conference -- the first major event under the auspices of the new Confucius Institute -- was held at the university.
But the actual organization of the event was handled by the Romanian Society of Traditional Chinese Medicine (SRMTC). The SRMTC, which was founded in 2008 and claims to have 83 members no longer has, as of 2018, the legal right to organize educational events such as the June congress in Iasi.
According to Romanian law, a medical conference falls under the category of “continuing medical education” and only providers accredited by the College of Physicians can organize such events.
SRMTC has not been on this list since 2018 when the College of Physicians decided to drastically limit how “alternative medicine practitioners” can offer their services.
In response to questions from RFE/RL, SRMTC President Angela Tudor defended hosting the event, saying that UMF Iasi was the main organizer of the conference.
Tudor added that the conference was attended by professors from universities in France, Italy, and the United States where traditional Chinese medicine is also taught as part of the curriculum.
“Traditional Chinese medicine has nothing to do with politics. It is practiced and studied on all continents as an important part of medicine,” Tudor said. “We are doctors and we study everything that can make us more competent in the fight against diseases.”
A Flagship In Bucharest And Beyond
While the program at UMF Iasi is a recent development, courses on traditional Chinese medicine have existed on an optional basis at UMF Bucharest for years.
In a statement provided to RFE/RL, a spokesperson from the rector’s office said that its alternative medicine program is in accordance with international guidelines and is reviewed and evaluated annually.
Still, the Chinese Embassy in Bucharest is actively involved with the university. On May 16, Han visited the campus and met with Jinga, the UMF Bucharest rector, where they discussed “future collaboration in the field of traditional Chinese medicine,” according to a press release.
A spokesperson from the rector’s office told RFE/RL that talks between Han and Jinga in April have already led to a new exchange program sponsored by China’s Commerce Ministry that sent two doctors from UMF Bucharest to China for a specialized traditional Chinese medicine course in July.
“The purpose of this course was to provide participants with a thorough understanding of the fundamental principles of traditional Chinese medicine,” the rector’s office said.
Other medical universities across the country have also embraced traditional Chinese medicine in recent years.
The central Romanian Transylvania University of Brasov offers what it says is a one of a kind master’s degree in Central and Eastern Europe and even began offering courses in English through a partnership with the University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Beijing.
Vasile Goldis Western University of Arad, in the western part of the country, is a private institution that hosts Romania’s first center for traditional Chinese medicine, where students can practice under the supervision of doctors from China, take Chinese-language courses, and receive a degree recognized by the Chinese government.
The press offices of Transylvania University and Vasile Goldis Western University did not respond to RFE/RL’s inquiries about their traditional Chinese medicine programs.
