Book excerpt: The Essentials of Chinese Medicine is a text book intended for international students who wish to gain a basic understanding of Chinese Medicine (CM) at the university level. The idea of writing such a text was originated from the Sino-American Consortium for the Advancement of Chinese Medicine (SACACM), which was founded in February 2000. In 1995, the British Hong Kong Administration set up a Preparatory Committee for the Development of Chinese Medicine to look into ways of bringing Chinese medical practice and herbal trade under proper control and r- ulation. After the reuni?cation of Hong Kong with mainland China in 1997, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region continued the efforts to uplift the practice of CM to a fully professional level through legislation. To help bring up a new generation of professional CM practitioners, the Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) obtained approval from the Government’s univ- sity funding authority to develop a School of Chinese Medicine to prepare students who will meet the future professional requirements through public examinations. In order to establish itself quickly as a rigorous provider of university level CM education, HKBU sought alliance with eight major CM universities in the Chinese Mainland, and one US university which was interested in developing CM edu- tion within its medical college. As a result, the Consortium known as SACACM was formed, with ten founding institutions from Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Sh- dong, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Heilongjiang, Hong Kong, and the United States.