Currently many people among the 8,000 Chinese medicine students and 2,500 licensed practitioners in California are not from China, who imposed greater pressure on Chinese practitioners than in the past.

Taking Los Angeles as example, Chinese medicine institutes mainly cluster at the city center, with a total of 400 to 500 students, according to local Chinese-language newspapers. Many institutes were set up by the ROK people, with Korean and Chinese students taking up an equal 35 percent of the total and white students standing at 22 percent.

According to the law of California, to get license for practicing medicine one must finish his credit in institutes after two years of initial studies.

Since 2001 the Chinese medicine credit was raised from 189 to 198, with 800 times clinical practices and all these are to be completed in at least three years. However, only 35 to 45 percent candidates can get licensed.

A Chinese student just graduated from a medicine university of Los Angeles said she had been doing medicine research in China for over 20 years. But when coming to the US she was still asked to finish 100 points of credit before getting recognized. As a result she studied more than one year before being granted the license for practicing.

Jiang Fanfan, chef of orthopedics department of a Chinese hospital, went to the US eight years ago. She had been practicing western medicine until she began to learn Chinese medicine two years ago. Once you learned both you find more freedom in the trade, she said.

(People?s Daily September 11, 2002)