Objective: This research maps out the anti-diabetes drug research in greater China, with the aim to identify the leaders in this field, to analyze interaction between them, to detect communities with high internal associations and to explore significant research directions. Methods: This research uses social network approach to construct an institutional collaboration network based on co-publication. The network was visualized by software Gephi and the relationships between institutes were analyzed with centrality measurements. Lastly, we used thematic analysis to reveal the research hotspots and directions of network communities. Results: 881 articles from 2009 to 2013 were retrieved from the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) database. This research found that Taiwan’s institutions prone to cooperate externally in comparison with ones in the mainland China and the spatial division and institutional hierarchy are still critical barriers to research collaboration in the field of anti-diabetic drugs in China. Fourteen thematic communities are detected and labelled by their high-frequency and characteristic keywords, such as, Chinese medicines, diabetic complications and insulin resistance etc. Chinese medicines is one of most frequent key words, while popular focuses relevant to Chinese medicines include berberine, flavonoids and resveratrol etc. In addition, communities that concentrate on rare research fields are usually isolated by others. Conclusion: According to the results of this study, researchers and scholars who are looking for experts in a specific research direction can rapidly spot their target community, from which they can select the most appropriate potential collaborator. Besides, the results may suggest preferential research directions for future studies