In November 4th, 2002, China has signed the landmark agreement with Association of South East Asian Countries (ASEAN), dubbed “Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation between The Peoples’ Republic of China and the Association of South East Asian Countries”, which signaled the economic and trade cooperation ushering in a brand new historic stage. In the wake of the Framework Agreement, the two sides initiated ensuing pivotal measure to hold the China ASEAN EXPO series which had been practicing for consecutive 18 years as the pragmatic step in a bid to further promote and strengthen the economic and trade development between the two parties. The corresponding effect is obviously remarkable. According to the statistics, the two sides have witnessed bilateral trade rocketing from 8.36 billion U.S. dollars in 1991, the year that China and ASEAN established dialogue relations, to 685.28 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, an increase of over 80 times. Just recently the 18th China-ASEAN Expo and China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit opened in Nanning, the permanent venue of Expo and capital city of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s congratulatory letter, which indicated the great success from series of operations in enhancing the bilateral ties. Along with the skyrocketing economic and trade development, one has also seen the booming in two sides’ cooperation on traditional medicine and herbal medicine, the area that China and ASEAN have communicated and exchanged with a long history and also reckoned as the significant part in traditional culture exchange between China and ASEAN countries. On top of the increasing concrete project collaborations, China ASEAN Forum on Traditional Medicine has also been annually hosted by the Guangxi local government as important sector of the Expo. Great progress in bilateral operation in the field of traditional and herbal medicines has been reached including the bilateral and multi-lateral collaborative centers of traditional medicine established between China and each member of ASEAN countries. Recently, both sides devoted the cooperation in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) fighting against Covid-19 by donating TCM products to ASEAN countries and collaborating in screening of traditional medicines and compounds therefrom to fight against Covid-19 infections, which has yielded remarkable research progress from these close collaborations. RCEP is an organization initiated by 10 ASEAN countries in 2012, in which China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India were invited to participate. There are 16 countries (10 ASEAN+6) for establishing a free trade agreement with a unified market of 16 countries by reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers. RCEP covers about 3.5 billion people, with a total GDP of US$ 23 trillion, accounting for one third of the global total. Because of its special geographical location and climatic conditions, its medicinal plant resources are abundant, and its traditional medicine has obvious advantages. Therefore, it is of far-reaching significance to analyze and study its traditional medicine resources and applications for the benefit of 16 countries. The Editorial Department of CHM organized this special issue according to the "Solvent Contributions Plan of Special Issue RCEP Traditional Medicine Research". Authors from RCEP countries and regions contributed the articles. In this special issue of RCEP Traditional Medicine Research dedicated to unearth the overall picture and progress made related to traditional medicine, 14 review or original research articles were collected to unleash the advancement in the traditional medicine research progress among the countries with same-rooted traditional medicine systems. These articles on basic research and applied development research provided useful information to readers and also will benefit the health of the people in the region and produce beneficial social and economic effects. In his review article, Prof. Chang-xiao Liu, the academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering and the honorary president of Tianjin Pharmaceutical Research Institutes, expounded in detail from five aspects to outline the general situation in traditional medicine development between China and ASEAN countries, including i) development basis of China ASEAN traditional medicine and herbal medicine, ii) development and efficacy of traditional medicine theory system, iii) industry development and regulation management of traditional medicine and herbal medicine products, iv) China-ASEAN traditional medicine exchanges and cooperation to promote traditional medicine cooperation and medicine trade, and v) strengthening academic and industrial cooperation and promoting the healthy development of traditional medicine and herbal medicine, respectively. From the points of geographical adjacency and cultural resemblance between China and ASEAN countries, Prof. Liu indicated that commonly shared culture and similar traditional medical systems formulated the basis for further development in the rising cooperation of traditional medicines. In addition, he also described the formation of each country’s traditional medicine theory system and the traditional and herbal medicine industry development plus the regulatory framework in China and each individual ASEAN country. The similarity, differences and even the restrictions among the theory systems and industrial developments were compared and highlighted. The research and cooperation progress in traditional and herbal medicines were individually summarized from each country’s perspective and some of the significant research achievements were exemplified with concrete case studies. He calls for strengthening the academic and industrial cooperation and promoting the healthy development in traditional medicine between China and ASEAN countries from the following respects. Firstly, research and development of traditional medicine products for treatment of Covid-19 should be highly addressed; secondly, research on the resources, medicinal values and application of traditional medicines ought be strengthened; thirdly, scientific research of traditional and herbal medicines should be reinforced and cooperation and sharing system should be established by taking advantage of modern technology like big data and artificial intelligence; fourthly, training of personnel in the areas of new methods and technology, new tools for probing medicinal value of traditional and herbal medicines is also the indispensable aspect. This review article will certainly facilitate the readers to navigate the current situation and future prospect in traditional medicine research between China and ASEAN countries. Other contributions to this special issue cover reviews or original research in the following areas including immuno-metabolism for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, future development of good agricultural practice, comprehensive analysis of traditional Chinese medicine for treatment and prevention of Covid-19 infections, chemical and pharmacological research progress of some important southeast Asian important medicinal or edible plants, phytochemical analysis and efficacy study of medicinal herbs, and the like, which were contributed by quite diversified authors from Mainland China, Macau China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and Germany. Prof. Liang Liu, also a academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering and former president of Macau University of Science and Technology, together with his team, reviewed the pathological mechanism of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and strategies to treat RA by applying traditional Chinese medicine and its natural compounds through targeting metabolic reprogramming of immune cells, and project them as a rich resource for providing the new potential paradigm for the treatment of RA. Prof. Jia-gang Deng and his team contributed three review articles with two focusing on the use of traditional Chinese medicine to prevent and treat Covid-19 diseases. In the article entitled “Analysis on Oral Medication Rules of Traditional Chinese Medicine Prescription for the Prevention of COVID-19”, they selected 157 commonly used anti-Covid-19 TCM prescriptions involving a total of 130 TCM herbs for manual screening through Excel and TCM inheritance assistant platform and summarized that the top five TCM herbs with the highest use frequency are Glycyrrhizae Radix et Rhizoma, Astragali Radix, Lonicerae Japonicae Flos, Atractylodis Macrocephalae Rhizoma and Saposhnikoviae Radix respectively. Based the above analysis, they concluded that the anti-Covid-19 TCMs mainly play the role by invigorating and tonifying qi (vital enegy), strengthening spleen, and eliminating dampness and heat according to Chinese medical terms. The contributors to this special issue from Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Japan and Korea mainly represented their research outcome dealing with antihypertensive, antioxidant and antiviral activity, anti-allergic contact dermatitis, signaling pathway regulation of local herbal medicines or edible fruit products. It is firmly believed that this special issue will provide valuable information to the readers and related parties on the recent research progress of traditional and herbal medicines among China, and ASEAN and RCEP countries. Due to the inseparable geographic relation and similarly-rooted culture in traditional medicines in the region, there is a nature-endowed advantage to closely cooperate on the research of traditional medicines under the established frameworks of China with ASEAN and RCEP countries. During the process, modern science and technology should be widely embraced to advance the scientific understanding of the theory and action mechanism of traditional medicine. It is anticipated that traditional medicine and herbal medicine would play much more significant role with more scientific understanding of its safety, efficacy, quality and mechanism to maintain and assuring the health of people in the geographical region and even entire mankind at large.

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