Haijin

The Haijin (海禁) or sea ban were a series of related isolationist policies in China restricting private maritime trading and coastal settlement during most of the Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty.

The policy introduced by the Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang significantly hampered the growth of China's domestic trade,^[1] although the Ming was not able to enforce the policy in full despite official proclamations, and trade continued in forms such as smuggling until the late Ming government opened the port of Yuegang for trade. Initially imposed to deal with Japanese piracy amid the neutralization of Yuan dynasty partisans, the sea ban was completely counterproductive: by the 16th century, piracy and smuggling were endemic and mostly consisted of Chinese who had been dispossessed by the policy. China's foreign trade was limited to irregular and expensive tribute missions, and the military pressure from the Mongols after the disastrous Battle of Tumu led to the scrapping of Zheng He's fleets. Piracy dropped to negligible levels only upon the end of the policy in 1567.

The early Qing dynasty's anti-insurgent "Great Clearance" (1661–1683) also caused considerable devastating effects on communities along the coast, until the Qing seized control of Taiwan and opened coastal ports to foreign trade. Separately, strict travel restrictions were temporarily implemented during the brief trade ban of the "Southern Sea" between 1717 to 1727. Later, the need to control trade gave birth to the Canton System of the Thirteen Factories (1757–1842), where trade ports was heavily 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.