Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is the result of a combination of genetic, environmental and immune factors. Although the disease is classified as a refractory disease in modern medicine, it has significant advantages in treating IBD on the basis of traditional Chinese medicine syndrome differentiation. Therefore, it is very important to explore appropriate animal models to study the effects and mechanisms of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of IBD. The chemically induced IBD model is the most commonly used to study the pathogenesis of IBD. This article summarizes the recent research progress of this type of model in Chinese medicine and discusses the characteristics of the model, pathological mechanism, research ideas and applications to facilitate the design of basic research of IBD.