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The article questions the role state and professional actors have played in the process of translating and transferring practices and medical knowledge – those of traditional Chinese medicine – between two countries – China and France. Using the sociology of professional groups as applied to the question of international transfers, we show that “importing” possibilities, as well as their forms and modalities, are largely determined by struggles between actors in the importing country. While the empirical research focuses mainly on metropolitan France, we have also followed all the professional actors involved and the way they have mobilized the transnational and the international within their national jurisdictional conflicts.