Chinese border security: historical and contemporary threat perceptions at China’s borders

Throughout history, Chinese territory has been safeguarded in diverse ways. In early Chinese history, governments understood their empire as territorially unbound, practicing flexible citizenship and cultural integration along its periphery. In contrast, the barbed wire decorating the borders during the Covid-19 pandemic aimed to symbolise an impenetrable installation against foreigners carrying the virus. This chapter introduces how border security was perceived, guarded, and practiced from early China to the twenty-first-century Chinese nation-state and how borders representing protection against external threats in the form of enemies, invaders, vassals, immigrants, and illegals changed over time. In ancient and premodern China, external threats were mostly associated with the military; territorial transgression by individuals was not considered dangerous. In twenty-first-century China and especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, foreigners are considered potentially dangerous, carrying diseases and civil deficits.