That is interesting. But surely you're talking of things that happened
thousands of years ago. Are you saying that modern Chinese people are
generally comfortable living in conditions approximate to imprisonment?
Is the Great Wall really like the Iron Curtain, there to keep its
citizens inside?
I'm saying this doesn't represent systems being set up for one purpose and then developing into a different, more nefarious purpose. The men at the gate were jailors before they were guards.
> surely you're talking of things that happened thousands of years ago.
Well, sort of. The Tang dynasty was from roughly 600-900 AD.
> Is the Great Wall really like the Iron Curtain, there to keep its citizens inside?
I realize this is just rhetoric, but as far as I understand it, the Great Wall's primary purpose is indeed to keep people in. Just not to keep citizens in.
You can't stop barbarians from getting over the wall, because it's too long to defend it all. But when they do come in, you can respond by sending an army to fight them. And when they retreat, they'll have a hell of a time getting over the wall before you can catch up to them.
(The steppe nomads to the north of China are highly mobile but low in population. China is the reverse. So in practical terms, the nomads always want to retreat, and to the extent a battle happens at all, that's a victory for China.)
