Polysaccharides are one of the important active ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine,which have hypolipidemic,hypoglycemic,immune enhancing,anti tumor,antioxidant,anticoagulant,anti inflammatory,anti aging activities,etc.It has become a bottleneck for development of new polysaccharide medicines in traditional Chinese medicine as they contain the characteristics of strong polarity,large molecular weight and difficult to confirm for structure.The pretreatment and analysis methods for polysaccharides in traditional Chinese medicine are reviewed in this article,aiming to provide references for qualitative and quantitative analysis of polysaccharide components in traditional Chinese medicine,improvement of quality control,in depth development of polysaccharide medicines and comprehensive research on the substance basis of traditional Chinese medicine.