Since the Tenth Five-Year Plan in China, the science and technology of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has gained unprecedented high attention, and at the same time, the people who have been engaging in the TCM research are bearing more and more missions and responsibilities. In order to get more significant breakthroughs and scientific achievements with great innovation, great value and great influence in the near future, the radical target and strategy for TCM research should be made out as follows: sifting out the lees, laying aside the disputes, tamping the identical opinions, and innovating to apply. In other words, the principle that "to do what can be done, not to do what can not be done; to do what should be done, not to do what should not be done, and to pay more attention to standardization than to innovation" should be recognized unequivocally. The six issues such as the evaluation and improvement of TCM efficacy, the safety evaluation and reasonable usage of TCM, the innovation and development of TCM quality evaluation and control technology, the sustainable utilization and protection of TCM resources, the elucidation and modernization of TCM basic theory, etc. should be considered as the prior and key aspects of TCM research in the following 20 years in China.