>They'll just declare that modern medicine has recognized and assimilated the concepts of traditional Chinese medicine

That's actually happening though. See this text for example: https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Western-Medical-Acupunct...

Chinese civilization has had a population of hundreds of thousands of people going back many hundreds of years. It's not the least bit surprising that they've figured out useful stuff about medicine. Even if you believe that the TCM theories are wrong, and it was all trial and error, the default position should be that it's possible to identify useful treatments through trial and error. It's Western chauvinism to believe that useful treatments can only be discovered via Western methods.