Haijin

The Haijin (海禁) or sea ban were a series of related policies in China restricting private maritime trading during much of the Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty.^[1] The sea ban was an anomaly in Chinese history as such restrictions were unknown during other eras;^[2] the bans were each introduced for specific circumstances, rather than based on an age-old inward orientation.^[3]

In the first sea ban introduced in 1371 by the Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang, Ming China's legal foreign trade was limited to tribute missions, placing international trade under a government monopoly.^[4] Initially imposed to deal with Japanese piracy amid anti-Ming insurgency, the Ming was not able to enforce the policy, and trade continued in forms such as smuggling. The sea ban was counterproductive: smuggling and piracy became endemic periodically (though not continuously),^[5] mostly perpetrated by Chinese who had been dispossessed by the policy. Piracy dropped to negligible levels upon the end of the policy in 1567. The policy slowed the growth of China's domestic trade, although the empire's weak enforcement of the policy opened the way for an unprecedented commercial revolution from the mid-1500s onward.^[6]

The early Qing dynasty established an anti-insurgent "Great Clearance" (1661–1683), prohibiting all residence and activities on the coast to weaken Ming loyalists. The order also caused considerable devastating effects on communities along the coast, until the Qing seized control of Ming loyalist bases in Taiwan, then reopened coastal ports to foreign trade. Separately, strict travel restrictions were temporarily implemented during the brief trade ban between 1717 and 1727, also to prevent the growth of anti-Qing resistance. Later, the need to control trade gave birth to the Canton System of the Thirteen Factories (1757–1842), where trade was legalised but restricted.

Similar sea bans occurred in other East Asian countries, such as the Sakoku policy in Edo period Japan by the Tokugawa shogunate; or the isolationist policies of Joseon Korea, before they were forced to end their isolation militarily in 1853 and 1876 respectively.