Framing Traditional Chinese Medicine as Science or Cultural Heritage: China’s Overseas Promotion Strategies since the Launch of the Belt and Road Initiative

The international promotion of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as part of
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has attracted considerable scholarly
attention. However, limited research has examined the Chinese state’s specific
framing of TCM in its promotion since the inception of the BRI. This article
addresses the gap by conducting a thematic analysis of a sizeable corpus of official
documents and state media reports on the international promotion and
development of TCM from 2013 to 2022. The findings show that the promotion of
TCM has been consistently politicised, with TCM being framed as both science
and cultural heritage in a state of flux. The fluidity of framing indicates that these
framings are deployed in various contexts and by different actors to advance the
diverse strategic objectives of the Party-state.