Reaching Millions in China With Power of Plant-Based Nutrition

“Over the past 40 years, the average Chinese diet has gone from being mostly plant-based to a diet that is now full of animal products and meat,” says Dr. Xu. “Because of that, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer are rapidly getting worse.”

Dr. Xu has spent more than a decade traveling the country lecturing to hundreds of thousands of people about the health benefits of a low-fat plant-based diet.

Since he began touring the country in 2014, with the occasional lecture prior to that, Dr. Xu has given more than 1,600 talks in 230 cities in China reaching over 240,000 people. Some of his recent stops have been in Baotou; Changchun; Changzhou; Chengdu; Dongguan; Dujiangyan, where he lectured to doctors and nurses at a hospital; Foshan; Hangzhou; Mianzhu; Nanjing; Shenzhen; Taiyuan; Wudangshan; Yibin, where he lectured at a local center for disease control; and Yichang.

Since 2017, Dr. Xu has also been organizing vegan cycling trips across different areas of China, with educational sessions on a low-fat plant-based diet in towns along the way. He has cycled about 10,000 miles across 20 provinces.

The cycling leader on a recent trip was a liver transplant survivor, who started following a low-fat vegan diet after his surgery. He has since set a personal record of riding 200 miles in a single day.

“These cycling events are a great way to demonstrate the power of a low-fat vegan diet and inspire people to lead a healthy and fulfilling life,” says Dr. Xu.

This year, Dr. Xu also began organizing seven-day vegan bootcamps. The first was in Yunnan with about 30 people. Since then, the bootcamps have become so popular that they recently grew to 180 people in Hainan and 270 in Chongqing.

“We have lectures, audience members sharing their healing stories, cooking demos, and low-fat vegan lunches,” says Dr. Xu. “We also break into smaller groups to have focused discussions about what they have learned during the day.”

In addition to Dr. Xu’s work on the ground, Dr. Lai leads our online efforts, reaching tens of millions of people through the online International Conference on Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine (ICNLM) and social media.

ICNLM, which features presentations in both Chinese and English, has focused on various topics over the years including diabetes, heart disease, cancer, healthy aging, and enhancing immunity.

“Because of the good foundation we built with the first three conferences, a Chinese government-affiliated organization endorsed the conference and has worked with us closely since 2022,” says Dr. Lai. “Since then, the conference has had about 600,000 views a year.”

Dr. Lai says that as overweight and obesity have emerged as a major public health challenge in China, Chinese authorities including the National Health Commission and the Ministries of Education and Civil Affairs launch a three-year campaign earlier this year to educate the public on weight management.

“Hence, the theme of ICNLM on Oct. 19 and 20 this year was the Key to Healthy Weight Management,” she adds. “We had a total of 26 health professionals who joined us to present their valuable insights and tips for healthy weight management.”

The conference, which included speakers from Australia, China, Spain, and the United States, was broadcast on WeChat and Weibo, two major social media channels in China.

“The participation and interaction were amazing,” says Dr. Lai, who credits the success of ICNLM in part to in-person and online promotion by volunteers leading up the conference. “During the event, we had more than 1.1 million views and more than 2 million likes!”

Dr. Lai also organizes the Chinese 21-Vegan Kickstart, which began on Nov. 18 this year to help ICNLM participants put a vegan diet into practice.

“We have about 14,000 Kickstart participants who are receiving daily recipes, knowledge, and support from our WeChat Kickstart community, which includes previous Kickstart participants,” says Dr. Lai.

In the Kickstart app there are daily check in activities, and people can share pictures of their meals, as well as their health improvements.

“People in China get to understand the benefits of a vegan diet, experience the power of a healthy diet, and feel so good about it that they advocate for veganism,” says Dr. Lai of the work she and Dr. Xu are doing with the Physicians Committee in China. “That's how our community expands, and that's how we will continue this effort.”

The Physicians Committee's education and outreach program in China is generously funded in part by the Greenbaum Foundation.