[Analysis of governmental administration on medical advertisements in modern China]

The huge medical market in modern China brought about prosperity and then an uncontrolled medical advertising industry. In order to standardize the market, the health institution resorted to laws and regulations. Shanghai Municipal Health Bureau began the work in 1928 and Shanghai Provisional Rules of Banning Obscene Drug Advertising was issued in 1929. In 1930, Provisional Rules of Chinese and Western Medicine Advertising of the Beiping Health Bureau was carried out and then Rules of Chinese and Western Medicine Advertising of Beiping in 1935. From then on, various parts of the country kept on developing and perfecting their own rules on the basis of Rules of Chinese and Western Medicine Advertising of Beiping and the local situation. Among the rules, Provisional Rules of Chinese and Western Medicine Advertising of Shanghai (1936), Rules of Administrating and Correcting Chinese and Western Medicine Advertising of Beiping (1946) and Rules of Medicine Advertising of Shanghai Municipal Health Bureau (1947) were representatives. Those rules embodied the modern government's principle on administrating advertising by legal means and restraining excess illegal medicine advertising. There were also some weak points in the supervision of medicine advertising, such as sluggish supervision, ineffective supervision and light punishment.