<p>Transdisciplinarity is crucial for addressing complex societal challenges, and one of its central tasks is to integrate knowledge from incommensurable paradigms. Despite ongoing methodological advancements, knowledge integration is often approached through social negotiation or modular simplification. This article proposes that the dominant Western philosophical foundations of transdisciplinary research, namely postmodernism, systems theory, and pragmatism, offer important insights but do not fully resolve the challenges of integration. More specific frameworks, such as integrative levels theory, robustness analysis, and truthlikeness, have further advanced particular aspects of knowledge integration, yet they primarily address vertical organization or domain-internal reliability. To complement these approaches, the article introduces a layered epistemic model derived from the traditional Chinese holistic worldview, built around three core concepts: Dao as the ultimate, dynamic principle, Xiang as mediating models and schemas, and Qi as concrete specialized knowledge and practices. This model reframes knowledge production as a dynamic layered system: it respects the specificity of disciplinary and situational knowledge at the Qi level, facilitates paradigm dialogue and transformation through shared cognitive interfaces at the Xiang level, and establishes a unified ontological foundation and value orientation at the Dao level. The article further explains the framework’s bidirectional circulation mechanism and argues that it provides a reliable epistemological basis for deep knowledge integration. Through constructive dialogue with mainstream Western paradigms and frameworks, the paper contends that the model incorporates insights from existing theories and, through the intrinsic interconnectedness between its layers, opens up a promising non-Western pathway for transdisciplinary research and advances the decolonization of knowledge production.</p>