China’s zero-Covid rules spark social media storm as article recalls ‘isolationist’ Ming, Qing era

Closed-door policies of last two imperial dynasties were actually ‘self-restriction’ that did both good and bad, Academy of History article argues
Weibo users allege the write-up promotes benefits of isolationism, as seen in China’s current Covid-19 policy.

US-China relations

Kawala Xie

Published: 9:00am, 31 Aug 2022

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An article on the “closed-door” policy of the Ming and Qing dynasties and its role in keeping away Western colonisers has sparked a storm on the Chinese internet, taking on added resonance as China sticks to its zero-Covid policy.

The isolationist policies of the last two imperial dynasties are sometimes blamed for closing off China to the outside world for some five centuries, causing its decline before the new People’s Republic came into being in 1949.

The article argues it was not a policy of complete isolation as such, but of “self-restriction” – to protect national interests and ward off foreign invasion.

However, while this delayed “the bloody eastward expansion of the Western colonialists” to some extent, the policy was “highly conservative” and had its limitations, it concedes.

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The article, published in June in a Chinese Academy of History journal, has recently been doing the rounds on social media. It is attributed to a research group, with no authors named.

“The concept of seclusion and isolation of the country did not exist in ancient China, nor was it the inherent image of China in the West … It is not an objective description of foreign policy in the Ming and Qing dynasties,” the article said.

“[The so-called closed-door policy] did not block the development of China’s foreign trade and the mutual learning of Chinese and Western cultures during the Ming and Qing dynasties, but it caused negative effects of passive defence and disregard of advanced Western technology,” it pointed out.

Some social media users, especially on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, were up in arms against that line of thinking, saying it attempted to “reverse history”, while others said it promoted the benefits of isolationism, likening the imperial stance to China’s current Covid-19 policy.

“The greatest danger of this paper is that it gives people a wrong impression – [that] if China is closed today, it is in response to the invasion of Western capitalism, and it is also a foreign policy that is in keeping with the times,” commented one Weibo blogger with more than 340,000 followers.

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However, the article was defended by Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the nationalist tabloid Global Times, who said it was “detrimental” to view the argument as reflecting a move away from China’s opening-up policy.

“China’s determination to continue opening up is very strong, the audits oversight agreement reached by China and the United States is the best evidence,” Hu said.

The two countries last week reached a significant preliminary deal that will allow US officials to audit Chinese businesses to prevent them from being delisted from US exchanges.

On the argument that Beijing’s Covid-19 policies were obstructing the country’s communication with the outside world, Hu asserted this was “a temporary problem” that China was determined to resolve.

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Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at Renmin University, however said the “self-restriction” concept proposed by the Academy of History research group was not mature and needed to be reconsidered.

“Over 150 years of history prove China needs to insist on being independent while absorbing advanced ideas from Western countries or other places by opening up … and undergoing its own reform. These two [ideas] should complement each other,” he said.

This comes as many Chinese cities are still fighting sporadic Covid-19 outbreaks under a dynamic zero policy.

The northeastern city of Dalian, for instance, is under “silent management”, which means partial lockdowns that restrict movement, while central Wuhan – where the pandemic was first reported in 2020 – requires residents to be tested every two days, failing which their electronic health codes will turn grey and bar them from entering public premises.

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In the southern tech hub of Shenzhen, large-scale events are on hold and residents in several districts have been told to stay home as much as possible as the city battles a fresh outbreak caused by a new variant.

China has yet to completely open up its borders since pandemic measures were first introduced more than two years ago, but has recently allowed international students to return and lifted some restrictions for overseas travellers, moves seen by many as a major step towards reopening the country.

The Post has contacted the Chinese Academy of History for comment.