Beijing (AFP)

It is a herbal medicinal liquid, such as honeysuckle. It has not been found in China since the highest scientific authorities praised the virtues of this traditional remedy to fight the new coronavirus. But not everyone is convinced.

Authorities discourage rallies to reduce the risk of contagion, but that hasn't stopped consumers from invading pharmacies in search of the precious "Shuanghuanglian" after the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences said on Friday it could "inhibit" the virus.

As of Saturday, doubts were circulating on social networks and in the press. The People's Daily, the governing body of the Communist Party, warned against using the traditional pharmacopoeia without medical advice.

And national television warned that the product could have side effects.

But Beijing seems determined to integrate traditional medicine in the fight against viral pneumonia which has infected more than 14,000 people since December, including more than 300 fatally, according to a last report published on Sunday.

The very official Academy of Sciences is also examining the potential virtues of an herb called "Japanese knotweed" which could alleviate the symptoms of the disease.

And dozens of traditional medical specialists are among some 6,000 staff sent in reinforcement to overcrowded hospitals in Wuhan, the city at the heart of the virus and placed in de facto quarantine since January 23.

- 'Nothing changed' -

What reignite the debate around the effectiveness of Chinese medicine, 2,400 years old.

Marc Fréard, member of the French Academic Council for Chinese Medicine, believes that the pharmacopoeia can help fight fever or clear mucus, two symptoms of viral pneumonia.

But he reminds AFP that some of the remedies offered are of dubious quality and that Chinese medicine lacks scientific efficiency standards, since it is based on individualized treatment.

Traditional treatments had been widely used in China, in combination with western medicines, during the 2003 SARS epidemic that killed 774 people worldwide, most of them in the country.

But a study by the Cochrane organization established in 2012 that this combination of treatments had "changed nothing" in the fight against the epidemic.

- Nationalism -

The regime of President Xi Jinping, in a willingly nationalist tone, strives to promote Chinese medicine abroad.

In 2015, the Nobel Prize in medicine awarded to the Chinese Tu Youyou was considered as a worldwide recognition of the traditional pharmacopoeia.

Beijing published in 2016 its first White Paper on traditional medicine, which notably defends the establishment of specialized centers in developing countries, with the dispatch of doctors to the key.

Xi Jinping himself called traditional medicine "the treasure of Chinese civilization" and declared last October that it should have as much influence as modern medicine.

China "seeks to spread its cultural message internationally" and medicine is one of them, observes Dr. Fréard.

Last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) included Chinese medicine in its "International Classification of Diseases", after years of campaigning in Beijing.

A decision challenged by the Scientific Council of the Academies of European Sciences (Easac) who saw it as "a major problem" due to the lack of scientific evidence establishing, according to him, the effectiveness of Chinese medicine.

Traditional medicine in China represented a colossal market of almost 120 billion euros in 2016, or one third of the turnover of the health sector, according to the agency Chine nouvelle.

For the writer Fang Shimin, known for denouncing scientific scams, the Communist regime's support for traditional medicine "serves to vibrate the nationalist fiber and has nothing to do with science".

© 2020 AFP