This paper reviewed the mechanism of occurrence and development of autophagy, and mainly discussed on the correlation between autophagy and the theory of traditional Chinese medicine and the research progress of the intervention of traditional Chinese medicine on autophagy. Autophagy is generally divided into 3 categories, the process of autophagy formation includes the induction stage, the formation stage and the mature degradation stage. At present, research found that autophagy was closely related to the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, such as “Qi deficiency and phlegm stasis”,“self-combination of Yin and Yang”,“liver controlling conveyance and dispersion”and so on. And a large number of studies indicated that traditional Chinese medicine showed regulatory effect on the level of autophagy.