However when public hospitals actually have a TCM department, it's hard to take them very seriously, at least in medical science. Actual medical science is referred to as "Western" medicine. Zuo Yue Zi (坐月子) -- the list of rules Chinese women must follow after giving birth, for example, is about the most absurd "medical" practice I've ever witnessed. Yet there are highly educated Chinese people that actually believe that stuff.
I lived in China for over 3 years, in Korea a few years prior to that, and while the culture has a rich history and it's a fascinating and generally friendly place, we're talking about people who are often one generation from living like it is still the 18th century. A place where black rhino horn has medicinal properties despite chemically being identical to my toenails and eating dog imparts sexual prowess, especially when the dog is beaten to death. These aren't niche beliefs, these are pretty mainstream attitudes, though it's definitely changing with the younger crowd.
The Cultural Revolution certainly didn't help -- essentially created a generation of people fearful of too much independent thinking. In 1965, there were over 400 technical journals in China. In 1969 -- 20.
You also have the very real problem of the government setting research agendas. It's not far from Lysenkoism. In fact, Lysenko contributed substantially to the 1959-61 famine that killed 30 million Chinese.
Chinese research, in my experience, has rarely been field-leading. It's generally derivative, rarely novel -- or at least if it is novel, it is rarely repeatable. There are a few exceptions, but compared to US, Korea, British, Japanese, German innovation, they aren't even close.