World Conference on Traditional Medicine opens in Beijing with focus on AI, regulation

The World Conference on Traditional Medicine 2026 opened in Beijing on Saturday, 17 October 2026, under the theme "Technology Empowerment and Integrated Development: Advancing Traditional Medicine for All". China's Premier Li Qiang gave the keynote speech at the opening ceremony, and Dr Saia Ma'u Piukala, the World Health Organization's Regional Director for the Western Pacific, also addressed the meeting. The conference is hosted by the Beijing municipal government, China's National Health Commission, the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine and the National Medical Products Administration, in collaboration with the WHO. Its agenda covers the law and regulation of traditional medicine, the use of artificial intelligence, and how traditional systems can be brought into mainstream health care.

Traditional medicine is no longer a side topic in global health. The WHO's Global Strategy on Traditional Medicine for 2025 to 2034, adopted by the World Health Assembly in 2025, asks countries to build evidence, regulate practitioners and products, and integrate safe, effective practices into their health systems. Meetings like the one in Beijing are where governments compare how they are doing that, and where the rules that will shape the field over the next decade are discussed.

The emphasis on technology is the most notable feature of this year's theme. Exhibitors at the companion fair showed an "intelligent" traditional Chinese medicine experience area, and the agenda puts artificial intelligence alongside law and regulation. For traditional systems, technology offers ways to standardise diagnosis, track the quality of herbal products and gather the kind of data that regulators and doctors trained in modern medicine ask for. It also raises new questions about how claims are tested before they reach patients.

The meeting is also a sign of how actively China is promoting its own tradition abroad. According to the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, China has cooperation agreements with nearly 50 foreign governments and international bodies, and has set up 30 overseas traditional medicine centres and 31 national-level service export bases.

For Indian readers, the comparison is direct. India hosts the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre in Jamnagar, Gujarat, and New Delhi hosted the second WHO Global Summit on Traditional Medicine, which ended with the adoption of the Delhi Declaration. Ayurveda, yoga and India's other systems are competing for the same global attention, research funding and regulatory recognition. How China frames integration, regulation and technology will shape the standards Indian practitioners and exporters are measured against.

The evidence question remains central for both countries. In September 2026 the WHO called for more research into traditional medicine, publishing research priorities that drew on an analysis of 39,927 research grants across 40 funding schemes and consultations with 199 experts from 75 countries. That work shows how little funding has gone into rigorous testing of traditional practices compared with their use.

Short-term: The conference gives governments, regulators and industry a platform to discuss common rules for traditional medicine, and puts China's push to integrate traditional and modern care, and to use AI in it, in the global spotlight.

Long-term: Decisions and partnerships that come out of meetings like this feed into how countries carry out the WHO's 2025 to 2034 strategy, including how traditional products are regulated, researched and traded across borders.

Who is affected: Patients who use traditional remedies alongside modern treatment, practitioners of traditional systems including Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine, regulators, researchers, and companies that make and export herbal products.

Questions and Answers