Earlier this year, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency announced as of July 1, acupuncturists and Chinese herbal medicine practitioners must be registered under the national registration and accreditation scheme with the Chinese Medicine Board of Australia.
Under the regulation, many practitioners would suspend their businesses until they pass the registration.
Acquiring a medical license is difficult not only overseas, but also in China.
Chen said China has adopted Western standards to regulate its medical system. It is not convenient for TCM because under the regulation, all practitioners are requested to pass a license exam, which includes exams on English and Western medical theories, which are major obstacles to rural practitioners.
Official data showed in 2010, there were about 294,000 Chinese medicine practitioners in China, while Western medicine practitioners were almost eight times more at 2.32 million.
Lack of sufficient education is the main reason why the number of TCM practitioners declined in recent years.
"College students majoring in TCM spend one third of the time learning English and general courses, another one third learning Western medicine. This means they only have about one year of studying Chinese medicine. It is almost impossible for them to become skilled at campus," Chen said.
Doctor Zhang Wei of the Jinan hospital said that modern education has broken the traditional apprenticeship of TCM. This brings up another problem -- many TCM practitioners are now not able to recognize some rare herbs.
In modern TCM education, acupuncture, Tuina, herbs and TCM diagnosis are divided into different disciplines for the traditional apprenticeship system, which requests a TCM doctor to manage all the skills through practice.
Experts also worry about deteriorating quality of herbs in the Chinese market.
The Anhui provincial drug authorities recently investigated 12 herbal production companies in suspect of using chemical dyes in production of herbal medicine.
Ginseng, Goqi and Shouwu were all once very common in the market. In recent years, however, many customers complained that bogus TCM materials made it hard to buy genuine wild herbs.
Luo Shiwen, former inspector for the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), said that modern methods of mass breeding have greatly reduced potency of herbal medicine.
Chen said that a significant proportion of the best herbs are exported, which help push up the price of domestic herbs.
In response to the problem, earlier this month, SFDA initiated a national crackdown on substandard or fake materials used in TCM production.
Knithof, who considers whether to stay in China after graduation, is optimistic about a future career back in the Netherlands as seeing more patients have realized the effectiveness of TCM.
By Ma Yujie (Xinhua)
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