China, the emerging medical tourism hot spot

Hainan, Xinjiang and Beijing show TCM promotion could attract wellness consumers from around the world

HAIKOU - Svetlana Shipetko and her two sons did not just come to South China's tropical island of Hainan to escape the freezing Siberian weather. Shipetko had an equally important goal - to ease her lower back pain.

Instead of prescribing painkillers, Shipetko's Chinese doctor Tang Yi performed the traditional Chinese therapy of "tuina", which literally means "push-and-pinch."