A traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) expert said Friday that the once popular TCM aficionado Zhang Wuben cannot be counted as a TCM practitioner, while admitting TCM does contribute to expanding life expectancy.

"I have been working as a TCM doctor for 53 years. Zhang Wuben is not a TCM practitioner but a charlatan, a quack," Tang Zuxuan, head of Dengzhou hospital of traditional Chinese medicine in Henan province, said at a press conference in Beijing.

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Late in 2009, Zhang gained fame overnight through his food therapy lectures on television and his hallmark theory that mung beans cure all. His book, Eat Out the Diseases You Have Eaten, became a best-seller on the book-retailing website joyo.com.

Zhang's medical qualifications were later exposed as false and his theories have been refuted.

"The unique feature of TCM is to prevent disease beforehand, to stop people's illness before it gets worse and to eliminate the chances of reoccurrence," Tang said.

The country's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) has set the goal of expanding the average life span to 74.5 years from the current 73 years. The average life span was 35 years when New China was founded (1949), Tang said.

The reason for the huge improvement is that we now have fewer infectious diseases and better living conditions, and the most important reason is that we have both Western medicine and TCM, Tang said.

Tang is a deputy from Henan province at the ongoing session of the National People's Congress.