摘要：This paper is grounded in a fundamental historical observation: there exists no eternal and universally optimal solution to a stat

Abstract

Against the backdrop of structural challenges to the globalization process and a global resurgence of nationalist ideologies, the debate over whether a nation should adopt an open or closed stance has re-emerged as a central issue.

This paper is grounded in a fundamental historical observation: there exists no eternal and universally optimal solution to a state's choice between "opening" and "closing." This choice is fundamentally constrained by the systemic pressures of its internal and external environments, the fundamental demand for survival and security, and the deep-seated cultural-psychological tendencies of its dominant ethnic group.

Employing the comparative historical analysis method within qualitative research, this study aims to transcend the static, either-or binary and construct a dynamic, systemic explanatory framework. It argues that a nation's degree of openness or closure is a strategic response made within a specific spatiotemporal context to a complex system interwoven from environmental dynamics, security bottom lines, and cultural psychology. The decision-making process is, in essence, a political act wherein the ruling group, based on its cognition, weighs and balances these decisive factors.

By systematically examining key historical cases, this paper demonstrates the robust explanatory power of this framework. It emphasizes that only by adopting such a dialectical, dynamic, and systemic perspective can we move beyond the ideological myth of a singular choice between "open" or "close," thereby providing a solid theoretical foundation for the objective assessment of complex international situations.

**Keywords:** Openness and Closure, Strategic Choice, Decisive Factors, Environmental Dynamics, Security Bottom Line, Cultural Psychology, Comparative Historical Analysis

I. Introduction: From a Core Historical Observation to a Systemic Analytical Framework

Surveying the landscape of world history—from the open and inclusive Tang Dynasty to the maritime prohibitions and isolation of the Ming and Qing dynasties, from the global connectivity of the Age of Discovery to the *sakoku* (closed country) policy of Japan's Edo Shogunate—the strategic choices of states between openness and closure have consistently exhibited a periodic pendulum-like motion. This enduring historical phenomenon raises a fundamental academic question: What is the deep-seated logic driving this pendular movement?

In response, a popular narrative rooted in a linear view of historical progress tends to construct "openness" as an historical inevitability and a symbol of progress, while simplifying "closure" as a malady of backwardness and irrationality. However, such a discourse, laden with preconceived value judgments, cannot adequately explain the complexity of history or the diversity of national choices. The starting point of this research is a core observation that directly confronts this complexity: "There is no eternally and absolutely correct answer for a state on the issue of 'opening or closing'; it must be closely related to the broader internal and external environment and its changes, as well as the needs of survival and security—these are the true determining variables... To a certain extent, the open or closed state of a nation and society is intrinsically linked to the preferences of the ethnic group that constitutes its demographic majority." Here, the "dominant ethnic group" refers to the ethnic group that constitutes the demographic majority within a specific state and plays a leading role in its cultural traditions and social identity; its cultural-psychological tendencies have a foundational influence on the overall attitude of society.

This observation precisely reveals the essence of the issue: to understand a state's "opening-closing" strategy, one must abandon simplistic moral presumptions and instead investigate the dynamic, fundamental determinants and their interaction mechanisms. Based on this, this paper aims to elevate this profound "observation" into a systematic "analytical framework." We adopt the method of comparative historical analysis in qualitative research, selecting and contrasting key cases from different civilizations and historical periods to identify recurring causal mechanisms and configurations of conditions.

The core thesis of this paper is that a nation's openness or closure is a strategic response, made within a specific historical context, to a dynamic system formed by the interplay of "environmental dynamics," "security bottom lines," and "cultural psychology." These three are not isolated analytical variables but constitute an organic whole that is mutually constructive and collectively determines the direction of state behavior. Political and economic considerations are embedded within the decision-making process, serving as important criteria and intervention tools for decision-makers as they weigh these fundamental factors. The purpose of constructing this framework is not to provide a universal law, but to offer a sophisticated analytical tool capable of understanding historical complexity and adapting to contextual particularities.

II. Environmental Dynamics as Contextual Constraints

The primary characteristic of national strategy is its profound contextual dependency. Changes in the internal and external environments constitute the most direct and urgent constraints and driving forces for national decision-making. Here, "environment" is a comprehensive construct encompassing multiple dimensions, such as the geopolitical landscape, global economic cycles, technological paradigms, and transnational challenges.

(I) The External Environment as a Window of Opportunity

When the international system is in a state of relative peace, and dominant rules provide stable expectations for mutually beneficial cooperation, the external world presents itself as a potential-filled "field of opportunity." In this context, obtaining resources necessary for development through openness becomes the most strategically rational choice. A key external condition for the success of China's "Reform and Opening-Up" policy, initiated in 1978, was the leadership's keen capture of the historical window presented by the détente period of the Cold War and the global industrial relocation. At that time, integrating into the global economy was seen as the only path to modernization, and the perception of environmental opportunity dominated the strategic direction. In this model, openness is an active seizure of the opportunities of the era.

(II) The External Environment as Systemic Risk

Conversely, when the external environment is widely perceived as hostile and highly uncertain—whether stemming from military confrontation, ideological competition, vicious economic rivalry, or non-traditional security threats—the interconnectedness brought by openness is re-evaluated from a developmental "lifeline" to a potential "vulnerability" for national security. The formation and confrontation of the two ideological camps during the Cold War is a paradigmatic example of strategic closure driven by systemic environmental pressure. The extreme urgency of the security threat meant that openness was strictly confined within the camps, while solid political, economic, and military barriers were erected against the outside. This "bloc-based" closure is a direct strategic reaction to specific environmental pressures.

**(III) The Resilience and Strategic Elasticity of the Internal Environment**

National strategy is also a precise diagnosis of its own internal condition. A civilization in a "period of strategic opportunity," characterized by political stability, economic prosperity, and strong social cohesion—such as the Tang Dynasty at its height—derives powerful cultural confidence and extraordinary absorptive capacity from its internal robustness, enabling it to transform external influences into rich nutrients for its own development. Conversely, a regime facing an internal governance crisis and intensifying social conflicts has extremely limited strategic resilience and is more inclined to view external influences as subversive shock forces. The choice of the extremely conservative "maritime prohibition" (*haijin*) policy by the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty, under the multiple pressures of pirate raids (*wokou*), northern border threats, and internal factional strife, is a typical example of seeking to maintain a fragile internal balance through strategic contraction.

The perpetual fluidity of environmental factors dictates that national strategy must possess a high degree of dynamic adaptability. The global COVID-19 pandemic instantly transformed a state of high interconnectedness into a global public health security crisis, compelling countries around the world, regardless of their prior policy orientation, to adopt unprecedented border closures and restrictions on the movement of people. This case vividly demonstrates that drastic environmental changes are sufficient to force any nation to fundamentally recalibrate its degree of openness.

III. The Security Bottom Line as a Boundary Constraint

Regardless of the face the environment presents, the fundamental and perpetual pursuit of a state is the survival of its polity, the integrity of its sovereignty, and the preservation of its core interests. This constitutes the rigid boundary that all open strategies cannot surpass, fundamentally determining the limits and bottom line of openness.

**(I) The Expansion of the Security Domain and the Practice of "Managed Openness"**

In the contemporary context, security has greatly expanded from the traditional military domain to a comprehensive, all-domain concept encompassing economic, technological, cyber, data, energy, and cultural spheres. For this reason, there is no absolute, unconditional openness in the world. Countries universally set "safety valves" in sensitive and critical sectors deemed vital to their national lifeline, implementing "managed openness" or "strategic openness." For example, the strict secrecy surrounding core defense technologies by all nations, the rigorous scrutiny of investments in key industries through mechanisms like the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS), and the global wave of "data sovereignty" legislation are all manifestations of this logic. Openness is always a practice conducted within the boundaries strictly demarcated by security red lines.

**(II) The Security Dilemma and the Generation of a Spiral of Closure**

In the anarchic international system, defensive measures taken by one country to ensure its absolute security are easily interpreted by other countries as threatening signals with offensive intent, thereby triggering reciprocal or even escalated strategic reactions. This is the classic "security dilemma." The current strategic competition between China and the United States in cutting-edge technology clearly demonstrates the contemporary form of this logic. Both sides, citing "national security" and "technological sovereignty" as their supreme justifications, have adopted a series of policies aimed at "decoupling" or "de-risking," the result of which is the creation of parallel and mutually exclusive subsystems within the global technology ecosystem. This indicates that when strategic trust between nations is lacking and security anxiety rises to a dominant position, states will still be driven toward a higher degree of closure, even if decision-makers are fully aware of the immense economic costs to be paid. Security, in this sense, constitutes the boundary constraint of strategic choice.

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### **IV. The Preferences of the Dominant Ethnic Group as the Cultural-Psychological Foundation**

National strategic decisions are not only based on the cost-benefit calculations of instrumental rationality but are also deeply rooted in the cultural values and identity embedded in the collective unconscious of society. The deep-seated cognitive schemas regarding "self" and "other," formed by the dominant ethnic group through its long-term historical development, profoundly shape the general sentiments and attitudinal dispositions of the entire society toward the external world, constituting a relatively stable cultural-psychological orientation of "openness" or "closedness."

**(I) An Open Orientation Fostered by Cultural Confidence**

When a civilization is at its zenith, its dominant ethnic group often exhibits a cultural confidence and universalist sentiment derived from its strength and splendor. The fundamental reason why the Tang Dynasty could present an open atmosphere of "a court of myriad nations paying homage to the emperor" lay in the powerful cultural confidence and magnanimous, all-embracing spirit generated by its unprecedented national strength. It was confident in the subjectivity and inclusiveness of its own civilization, believing it could organically "localize" any foreign cultural achievements to further enrich its own civilizational spectrum.

(II) A Closed Orientation Driven by a Sense of Cultural Crisis

Conversely, when the dominant ethnic group perceives that its traditional culture, value system, or way of life is being strongly eroded and challenged by external forces, a profound sense of cultural crisis and identity anxiety can permeate society, easily transforming into cultural conservatism and xenophobic sentiment. The *sakoku* edicts in Japan, which lasted for over two hundred years during the Edo period, were motivated by multiple factors, but a deep-seated fear of the impact of Catholic thought on Japan's traditional social structure (such as the Shinto-Buddhist belief system and the secular authority of the Shogun) was undoubtedly a core psychological and cultural driver. In this sense, *sakoku* was a compulsory measure of cultural isolation taken to maintain internal cultural homogeneity, purity, and political order.

The cultural-psychological orientation constitutes the deep socio-psychological foundation of strategic decision-making. Although it does not directly issue administrative orders, it delineates the potential boundaries of legitimacy and the level of social acceptance for any major strategic choice. A decision-maker who intends to implement an open or closed policy that severely contradicts the mainstream cultural-psychological orientation will inevitably face immense internal resistance, the risk of social fragmentation, and high political costs.

V. The Decision-Making Mechanism: The Political Balancing and Execution of Decisive Factors

Environmental dynamics, security bottom lines, and cultural psychology together form the deep determinant structure of a state's "opening-closing" strategy, but this structure does not automatically generate policy. The final decision is the crucial link that transforms these three-dimensional factors, a complex process of weighing and choosing filled with political agency.

(I) Cognitive Filtering and Executive Efficacy of Political Systems

Different political systems determine which actors, through what procedures, perceive, interpret, and prioritize these decisive factors. The decision-making process in authoritarian regimes may place more emphasis on the long-term stability of the regime and the achievement of strategic goals. Their strong state capacity can, for a certain period, guide, shape, or even suppress society's short-term cultural preferences, as is particularly evident in the top-down design and forceful promotion of China's Reform and Opening-Up. In contrast, the decision-making process in democracies is more pluralistic and open, and more susceptible to the significant influence of short-term public opinion fluctuations, interest group competition, and electoral political cycles. When populist sentiments combine with a closed cultural-psychological orientation of the dominant ethnic group, it can give rise to hardline trade protectionism and xenophobic immigration policies.

(II) The Leverage Role of Economic Interests within a Given Framework

Economic interests are one of the most persistent and powerful positive levers for promoting openness, but they too must be prudently considered within the strategic framework jointly demarcated by security and culture. When pure economic rationality (such as pursuing absolute comparative advantage) conflicts with core security objectives or fundamental cultural value identifications, decision-makers are often forced to sacrifice some economic benefits. Incurring a certain loss of economic efficiency to protect the defense industrial base, maintain technological sovereignty over key technologies, or defend national cultural identity is not only common in the logic of political decision-making but is also considered necessary.

Therefore, the essence of the decision-making process lies in this: the ruling group or core decision-making body, under the constraints of a specific political structure and ideology, assesses the external environment for opportunities and risks, clearly defines and defends the internal security bottom line, keenly perceives and strategically responds to socio-cultural-psychological preferences, and ultimately, within the complex force field interwoven by this series of decisive factors, finds a dynamic equilibrium point that is most politically feasible, strategically rational, and socially acceptable under the historical conditions of that time. This constantly evolving equilibrium point is what is externalized as the "degree" of a nation's "opening or closing" at a specific historical moment.

VI. Conclusion

Returning to the core historical observation upon which this paper's thesis is founded, we have, through the construction and detailed demonstration of a dynamic, systemic analytical framework, clearly shown that the strategic choice of a nation between openness and closure is by no means a simple policy switch or a linear historical process. Instead, it is a highly complex, strategic, and dynamic process deeply embedded in historical contexts, security structures, and cultural psychology.

First, we must thoroughly abandon any form of linear view of historical progress and simplistic moral presumptions. Openness and closure are, in essence, instrumental and contextual strategies adopted by states to seek survival and development in specific historical situations. Their "effectiveness" and "correctness" depend entirely on their degree of match and adaptation to the complex system, constituted by environment, security, and culture, of that specific time and place.

Second, a nation's "opening-closing" strategy is a systemic product organically interwoven and jointly determined by environmental dynamics, security bottom lines, and cultural psychology. The environment is the contextual driving force for periodic strategic adjustments; security is the rigid boundary that delineates the feasible scope of strategy; and culture is the deep psychological foundation that influences the direction of strategy and its social legitimacy. These three form an inseparable, dynamic causal network for understanding this issue.

Third, political and economic factors are deeply embedded in the decision-making process, serving as important criteria and intervention tools for decision-makers as they conduct political balancing and resource allocation. However, their logical space for operation and policy options are always constrained by the scope delimited by the more fundamental decisive factors mentioned above.

This framework provides us with a powerful theoretical tool to break free from ideological myths and calmly examine the current world. The so-called "de-globalization" wave and the return of great power strategic competition are not historical "aberrations" or simple "regressions." Instead, they are an inevitable manifestation in line with historical patterns, resulting from the combined effects of profound changes in the international power structure (environmental dynamics), the intensification of the strategic trust deficit between great powers (security bottom line), and the rise of identity politics and cultural anxiety within various countries (cultural psychology).

Looking ahead, national open strategies will increasingly exhibit new characteristics of "precision," "sectoralization," and "bloc-formation." That is, maintaining or even deepening openness and cooperation in areas deemed controllable and acceptable in terms of security and culture, while tending toward strict control and the pursuit of autonomy in areas identified as sensitive and critical strategic domains. This is precisely the new strategic form that will inevitably emerge as states, under new historical conditions, re-cognize, re-evaluate, and re-balance the set of decisive factors of environment, security, and culture.

Ultimately, for any nation, how to continuously maintain a keen perception of environmental changes, a clear definition of security needs, and a profound insight into its own cultural psychology in an ever-changing world, thereby finding a stable equilibrium point that both guarantees security and promotes development while consolidating social consensus, will be an eternal test of its governance wisdom and strategic resilience!

References (Omitted)

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