A lot of people today overestimated the reach and destruction that resulted during the C.R, the C.R movement was basically the reflected version of the January 6th riot in the capital multiplied 5000-fold, with Mao Zedong in lieu of Donald Trump; not everyone in society or in the CCP government agreed with them. You got people high up in the echelon like Zhou Enlai who ordered for PLA soldiers to guard the Forbidden City from the Red Guards (the reason why the Forbidden City & other religious buildings and monuments still exist in China today)

In addition, the destruction of the C.R happened most commonly in the big towns and famous cities, whilst most of the poor, remote and rural towns and villages were far away from the chaos, and it is there that the majority of the old information, cultural norms and customs still managed to survive to be passed on, TCM included. The people inhabiting these places would be more focused on agriculture, putting food on their table and not starving to death than wasting their time on book and statue burnings. The circumstances of poverty and remoteness of these Chinese villages and towns would have ensured the survival of TCM practices considering these places probably still did not have anything remotely close to infrastructure or public health care.

EDIT: Also included Chinese diaspora who fled to other countries with cultural and traditional customs and knowledge then returned back once the C.R died down, also ensuring its survival.

I am of Chinese descent who grew up in a Chinese household, my parents and extended family turn to TCM for the complete OPPOSITE reason you described, in the fact they believe Western/Chemistry-Pharmaceutical based medicine are synthetic, contain unnatural chemicals that may have bad/long term unforeseen side effects to the body, disrupt ‘Qi’, big-pharma monopolization on production methods etc. and would instead resort to TCM because it’s natural, have been around for far longer and where governments and private corporations have no monopoly control over its manufacture and distribution. If it isn’t up to the seriousness of pneumonia, limb loss or cancer, they’d try and go with TCM first before upping the ante to Western medicine.

Wikipedia states that anything resembling Traditional Chinese Medicines originated some 2000+ years ago, though I’d agree, the Chinese government would appropriate it to hide the fact during their reign their healthcare system at the time might not be up to scratch and pushed TCM to cover their asses in places they’d fall short on in public healthcare. Similar to how many kings, emperors, caliphs and popes throughout history would appropriate religion in order to give their constituents justification to go to war and kill ‘x,y,z’ people.

But no, I’d disagree, TCM factually has been around for far longer before the CCP even came into existence. I’d say it has a tradition

I would have expected it was because people in China distrusts the vaccines/the government and may not instead resort to bullshit like Chinese Traditional Medicines to prevent/cure COVID leading to lower than expected vaccination rates, making the government resort to alternate preventative measures such as Zero-Covid to prevent further additional hospitals and healthcare sectors being overwhelmed with covid patients.