Objective To analyze the status of international publication of Chinese medicine papers and international TCM cooperation team. Methods The Science Citation Index Expanded（SCIE） database was used as the data source to retrieve Chinese medicine related research articles and reviews published from January 1

2008 to September 30

2017. Frequency analysis

co-occurrence matrix analysis

autocorrelation analysis

cross-correlation analysis

and other methods were applied to do statistics of the total number of papers and cooperation teams from the perspective of the publishing countries and regions

institutions

and journals. Results A total of 26 254 articles were retrieved. The total 16 837 articles published in mainland China exceeded the number of other countries and regions

followed by 1832 in Taiwan

China

1817 in the United States

1238 in Republic of Korea

552 in Britain

498 in Germany

458 in Japan

450 in Australia

271 in Brazil and 206 in Canada. In 2008—2017

totally 2755 journals published Chinese medicine related papers

of which 75 journals published over 50 Chinese medicine related papers

and they all had relations with complementary & alternative medicine to some degrees. In terms of cooperation teams

the larger cooperation teams include the European team with Germany

the United Kingdom

Denmark

Italy and Norway as the center

and the cooperation teams of Southeast Asian countries of Thailand

the Philippines

Singapore

Malaysia and Indonesia. The cooperation of mainland China was relatively inadequate with other countries and regions. Conclusion The total number of Chinese medicine papers published in mainland China occupies absolute superiority

but there is insufficient cooperation with other countries and regions in the world.