Taiwan imported US$29.66 million worth of Chinese herbal medicine from the Chinese mainland in 2008, making the island China's fifth largest export market for this type of exports, Liu Tzu-hui, a researcher with the center, quoted a Chinese government customs report as indicating.

According to Taiwan's customs statistics, however, the percentage of Taiwan's Chinese medicine imports from mainland China was even greater - at about 60-70 percent of its total imports of this type of product.

Ginseng preparations made the bulk of these imports, constituting about 28.5 percent of the total, Liu said, citing Taiwanese official statistics.

Taiwan's imports of Chinese herbal medicine materials from around the world, excluding prepared herbal medicines, totaled NT$2.42 billion (US$75 million) in 2008, according to the statistics.

Liu said China is the world's major exporter of raw materials of Chinese herbal medicines and prepared herbal medicines as its production chain in this industry is well rounded, with a huge number of suppliers and processors.

The quality of these medicines, however, was unstable and hard to control, said Liu.

She noted that 30 percent of the prepared herbal medicines sold around China last year were found to be below standards by Chinese health authorities.

Commenting on the wide gap between the import and export figures from Chinese and Taiwanese customs authorities, Liu said it is normal that the official figures from across the strait varied considerably since the two sides do not maintain any system of exchanging their customs data or any mechanism to verify the veracity of trade figures reported by the private importers and exporters.

Meanwhile, Taiwan's exports of Chinese herbal medicine materials stood at NT$635 million for the same year, according to government statistics.

According to Liu, Taiwan's locally-produced Chinese medicinal preparations made up about 10 percent of the country's total pharmaceutical output annually, and were worth between NT$5-6 billion.

Taiwan's competitive edge over China is that it has well-developed production technology, solid research and development foundation and good brand name images, she added.

(By Pan Chi-i and Deborah Kuo)