The Great Retraction: From Wooden Junks to Fiber Optics

 

The Great Retraction: From Wooden Junks to Fiber Optics

History is not a circle, but a spiral—the same themes recur with increasingly sophisticated tools. China’s current "VPN Zeroing" campaign is the digital reincarnation of two historical traumas: the Qing Dynasty’s Great Clearance (禁海令)and the COVID-19 Zero-Policy (封城). In all three instances, the central logic remains the same: the state believes that total isolation is the only cure for "external contamination," whether that contamination is pirates, a virus, or a YouTube video.

From a human nature perspective, this reflects a recurring paranoia within centralized power. When the world outside becomes too complex to control, the instinctive reaction is to slam the door, lock the windows, and pretend the exterior doesn't exist.

A Lineage of Isolation

The parallels are striking, revealing a persistent "fortress" mentality across centuries:

• The Qing Sea Ban (1661): To starve out rebels in Taiwan, the Qing forced coastal populations miles inland, burning homes and banning ships. It destroyed the maritime economy to protect the throne. Today’s "emergency cable pulling" in Shenzhen is the modern version of burning the junks. The goal is the same: cut the connection to Taiwan and the outside world, regardless of the economic cost to coastal merchants.

• The COVID Lockdown (2022): The "VPN Zeroing" is essentially a Digital Quarantine. Just as people were barred from leaving their apartments to achieve "Zero-COVID," data is now barred from leaving the border to achieve "Zero-Information." The police calling a student over a Teams code is the digital version of a "Big White" (防疫大白) knocking on your door because your health code turned red.

The Business of Self-Harm

In every instance, the business model of the "retraction" is cannibalistic. The Qing Dynasty eventually fell behind the West because it missed the Industrial Revolution during its isolation. The COVID lockdowns shattered domestic consumption and global supply chains. Now, "VPN Zeroing" threatens to decapitate China’s tech sector and foreign trade.

The cynicism is palpable: the state treats the internet as a "foreign scam," just as the Qing treated foreign trade as "barbarian trickery." The irony? By successfully isolating its citizens, the state also accidentally "cleans up" the global internet by choking the scam factories—a rare moment where the world benefits from China’s self-inflicted wounds.

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