Why did Kangxi close the door to the world?

The impact of the closed-door policy is divided into two aspects. The positive influence is that the closed-door policy has cracked down on maritime smuggling and pirates' invasion of coastal areas to a certain extent, and has also played a positive role in maintaining the stability of the feudal regime in Ming and Qing Dynasties. At the same time, some Han people with ulterior motives can not get the support of foreign forces, temporarily alleviating the sharp ethnic contradictions in China.

Portrait of Zhu Yuanzhang, the proponent behind closed doors.

However, the influence of the closed door still has a negative side, which makes China in the17th century seriously out of touch with the world. As a result, China's domestic culture, economy, science and technology are far behind western countries, and China people don't understand western advanced things and productivity. At the same time, the closed door has seriously hindered the budding development of capitalism in China, and let China miss an excellent development opportunity.

Experts always put the negative impact in the first place when discussing the impact of the closed-door policy. After all, as a negative national policy, the closed door policy has greatly reduced the opportunities for China people to get in touch with foreigners. Throughout the Ming and Qing Dynasties, China's foreign trade showed a downward trend. Originally, China's foreign trade developed very well, but as soon as the closed-door policy came out, China completely lost its advantages in foreign trade, which led to the domestic advanced productive forces and the seeds of capitalism being strangled in the cradle.

In fact, the closed-door policy also caused some conflicts in the late Qing Dynasty. For example, the two subsequent Opium Wars were the results of the industrial revolution brought by the British rulers who wanted to destroy the closed-door policy and open the door of China to the China market. In addition, restricted by the closed-door policy, China's foreign trade and navigation cannot develop.

Close the door to the outside world

The closed-door policy of the Ming Dynasty was an official national policy that strictly restricted China people's contact with the outside world, including restricting foreign trade and friendly activities between China and foreign countries, which had a far-reaching impact on later generations. This negative policy led to the decline of China for hundreds of years and the plummeting of navigation.

Zhu Yuanzhang portrait

Ming dynasty was the first feudal dynasty to put forward the policy of closing the country to the outside world. The implementer of the closed-door policy was Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming Taizu. In order to guard against Japanese politically, protect China's natural economy, and put an end to China's metal outflow, he implemented a blockade policy. In fact, Zhu Yuanzhang's policy was not closed to the outside world at that time, but its official name was "sea ban". As the name implies, China people and foreigners conduct equal and friendly trade.

In fact, the closed-door policy of the Ming Dynasty was not closed to the outside world as people now understand it. To a certain extent, it allows official trade, but does not allow private trade with the outside world, especially precious metals. The rulers of the Ming Dynasty also restricted the commercial activities of some countries in China. After that, the Qing dynasty's closed-door policy was much stricter than the Ming dynasty's "sea ban" policy. Under the sea ban policy, although few people could get in touch with the outside world, China's trade and navigation did not suffer a devastating blow, and it also played a certain role in self-defense at that time.

The closed-door policy of the Ming Dynasty began in the early Ming Dynasty and ended in the reign of Qin Long in the Ming Dynasty. It lasted for more than 70 years and ran through the whole history of the Ming Dynasty. After Emperor Yongle, with the gradual strengthening of China's naval strength and social stability, this policy began to loosen gradually, and by Qin Long's generation, it had existed in name only.

Reasons for closing the country to the outside world

Closing the country to the outside world was a policy implemented by the Qing and Ming governments in China's ancient history, which strictly restricted foreign exchange activities, including foreigners' business activities in China and China people's activities abroad. The reason for shutting the country out is basically because China was in a self-sufficient feudal economy in ancient times, the whole national economy was closed and backward, and the rulers did not accept foreign novelty.

The Portrait of Zhu Yuanzhang in the Closed Period of Ming Dynasty

Historians of later generations believe that there are many reasons for shutting the country out. In addition to the economic self-sufficiency of the most important feudal dynasty, some rulers restricted people's activities at sea for the sake of maintaining political stability. At that time, Japanese pirates invaded the southeast coastal areas in the middle of Ming Dynasty, and some western colonists began to expand eastward in the middle of Qing Dynasty. The rulers of Qing Dynasty and Ming Dynasty were keenly aware of this trend, so they implemented a passive closed-door policy to limit their expansion in China.

The rulers of China believed that if the people were strictly isolated from the outside world, it would be beneficial to the stability of the feudal regime and to the alleviation of ethnic conflicts in China. At that time, the contradiction between Manchu rulers and Han nationality was very sharp. Rulers believe that if the Han nationality in China adopts the closed-door policy without external support, ethnic conflicts will be alleviated, but this view has obviously not been recognized by later historians.

Historians of later generations have given many explanations about the reasons for shutting the country out. The most important reason is the above. Other reasons, including the personal factors of the rulers, the low education level of the people and the fact that the domestic natural economy could barely maintain the operation of the country at that time, also promoted the implementation of the closed-door policy to a certain extent.