ObjectivesTo analyze the citation of evidence in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) clinical pathways in China, and to provide suggestions for future development and revision of TCM clinical pathways.MethodsTCM clinical pathways released on the websites of national administration of TCM and China association of Chinese medicine were obtained, with the retrieval time limit to June 2019. Two researchers separately utilized the Excel to extract data and performed a descriptive analysis.ResultsA total of 405 TCM clinical pathways were included, involving internal medicine, surgery, gynecology and pediatrics. Internal medicine accounted for the largest proportion of the TCM clinical pathways (133). All the 405 pathways cited references as evidence, among which the maximum and minimum quantities of cited references were 11 and 1, respectively, and the median was 3. More than 90% of the TCM clinical pathways cited the evidence in the parts of diagnosis and efficacy evaluation. For parts of TCM and western medicine treatment, the proportion of TCM clinical pathways which cited evidence was less than 75%; for parts of rehabilitation and nursing, the proportion of TCM clinical pathways which cited evidence was less than 2%. The types of evidence being cited were standard indicators (683), clinical practice guidelines (488), textbooks (236), consensus opinions, ancient books and clinical surveys. The released time was reported in 89.25% of the cited evidence; the largest time interval was between the release time of the standard indicators (evidence) and that of the TCM pathways. Among the evidence released more than 15 years before the release of the TCM pathways, the proportion of standard indicators was the highest (57.12%).ConclusionsThe published TCM clinical pathways are all developed based on evidence, however, the evidence citation ratio in different parts varies greatly. In some TCM clinical pathways, the cited evidences are not reported normatively, and some evidence are poor in timeliness.