I am a scientist by training. I was of the "Chinese medicine is hogwash" camp until Chinese medicine fixed an issue I was having that Western medicine just did not have the capacity to fix.
Chinese medicine's development has been considerably scientific if you consider the times and the lack of standards. 5000 years of evidence is no small feat. Needless to day, it does not meet today's western medicine standards. They didn't do double blind testing, or account for the placebo effect, and focuses on a person's chi/energy/other spiritual terminology. There are no elaborate scientific records of their experimental activities for people to consult and scrutinize.
If there was enough of a push to conduct modern day clinical testing with Chinese medicine, I think that this debate would be over. A few problems though: 1) clinical testing is extremely expensive. The sheer number of participants and scientists required to test this many combinations of drugs is insane. No one trusts testing out of China. 2) In order to be approved for clinical testing, you must have a sound scientific basis upon which your drug behaves. There has been quite a bit of research into how these herbs work in the first place, but much is still left to be done. 3) The push for "natural alternatives" in the West has completely demolished the desire to create Westernized drugs out of the untested Chinese medicine. Yes, China is doing it on their own, but China's own Western medical system is heavily biased towards Chinese medicine. Just ask any doctor of western medicine working in China.
Can you imagine the sheer number of drugs that would finally be available and proven to work once this testing complete? Chinese medicine would no longer be entirely blind when it comes down to the hogwash and the science.
Right now, I trust Chinese medicine to deal with the small things that Western medicine cannot fix or cannot fix without serious side effects (ie, death). Anything that gets serious funding in research, I would trust Western science. Nothing desperate, just hormone imbalances, the common cold/symptom reduction, chronic nosebleeds, etc. The things that they would have had and known about without biopsies 2000 years ago.
Something to keep in mind: 5000 years of the placebo effect is STILL the placebo effect.