Abstract
New pharmaceuticals resulting from complex innovative processes question -emics and -etics categorizations of medicines. Localized between biomedicine and Chinese medicine knowledge production processes, they are part of an "integrated medicine" promoted within the framework of the Chinese public health system while circulating in networks operating at local, national or international scales. This article is organized in two main parts. Based on two case studies, the ACT (Artemisinine Combined Therapies) currently recommended by WHO for malaria treatment, and the Tang herbal tablet (Tang caopian) used in China for complementary HIV treatment, the first part documents research and development of new pharmaceuticals and raises issues relative to these processes. The second part discusses the definition of a new product from several -etics views and their nature of "hybrid objects" through the identification of "extended networks", two concepts borrowed from Latour (1991).