Acupuncture became popular in the West after Mao came to power. One of the communist's big sell points was universal health care. Trouble was, actual health care is expensive. So instead, the communists replaced it with traditional Chinese medicine, which is about as effective as traditional Western medicine; that is, not very.
But you have to balance out the fact that it doesn't actually work with the fact that it is at least very cheap.
There is a tendency in the West for some people to figure something must be good if it originated elsewhere and has been around for a long time.
There are plenty of crappy studies that show Acupuncture (or any other pseudo-medicine) to "work." But real double-blind studies show it to be entirely worthless.
Oh, sure--you can always find someone who tried it for some mild disorder (which always grows in the retelling). But you just aren't going to find many who used it during their last open heart surgery.
My dad had great luck treating his arthritis with Mississippi mud packs.