Marquesa Leung

Some bridges are built by engineers. Others are built by people who have lived on both sides.

I came to Traditional Chinese Medicine not as a career choice, but as a calling. I studied it at its roots, in China — learning to read the body through the quality of a pulse, the colour of a tongue, the way a patient holds their breath when they speak about their pain. I learned that TCM diagnosis is not a checklist. It is a conversation with the whole person. And I learned how fragile this knowledge becomes when it is not protected.

Years of working across international governance, regulatory technology, and healthcare gave me a perspective I did not expect. I watched how regulatory frameworks, thoughtfully designed and rigorously enforced, create the conditions for excellence to flourish. And I began to see, with increasing clarity, that Traditional Chinese Medicine in Europe was facing a crisis that was structural at its core.

In most European countries today, someone can complete a short course, weeks or months, and legally call themselves a TCM practitioner. Meanwhile, a physician trained in China has spent five years in full-time study before being permitted to touch a patient. This is not a minor administrative gap. It is a fundamental failure of patient protection, and it is quietly eroding the credibility of a medical tradition that has served humanity for more than three thousand years.

That erosion is what I cannot accept.

European Qualifications Initiative of Traditional Chinese Medicine was born from this conviction. It is not about creating barriers. It is about creating the conditions in which genuine excellence can be recognised, protected, and trusted by patients, by governments, and by the healthcare systems that shape what treatments people can access.

If you are a practitioner who has worked hard to master your craft and deserves recognition, this is for you. If you are a patient who wants to know that the person treating you has genuinely trained for years, not weeks, this is for you. If you believe that TCM has an important role to play in European healthcare, but only if it is properly governed, I hope you will join me.

The bridge needs to be built. I intend to build it.