<p>Since the World Health Organization incorporated Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) into its scientific framework and established "World Traditional Medicine Day" in 2018, TCM has garnered widespread attention globally. This study analyzes the emotional agenda-setting among global media regarding TCM from a global perspective, based on the Intermedia agenda-setting theory, considering the context of global hotspots and policy backgrounds. It examines the Intermedia emotional agenda-setting of TCM before, during, and after the pandemic, constructing an emotional agenda network among nations and incorporating cultural distance as a factor influencing agenda-setting to explore global cross-cultural communication.The findings reveal a significant contrast in emotional agendas between China and the United States, with the U.S. exhibiting more positive emotions while China struggled to counteract negative publicity during the pandemic. Globally, the emotional agenda surrounding TCM has undergone four stages: controversy, fluctuation, reversal, and recognition, reflecting a trend of increasing negativity with more coverage.Granger causality test results reveal that across three distinct periods, China, Turkey, the United States, and Vietnam successively demonstrated a relay effect in setting both positive and negative emotional agendas. Furthermore, based on the Granger causality test data among countries, Europe has emerged as the center of the global emotional agenda network. The process of communication the global emotional agenda transcends traditional temporal and spatial boundaries and cultural distances, no longer relying on geographic proximity or economic strength. Instead, it shifts towards a mutual nourishment of cultures among different countries, where greater cultural distance facilitates the contagion and influence of emotional agendas.</p>