This doesn't seem very accurate to put it lightly. Legalism, embraced by Emperor Qin Shi Huang, with its endorsement of strong, central control under an autocratic authority developed before the wall was built and helped influence him to build it, not vice versa. Confucianism, the guiding philosophy throughout a significant portion of Chinese imperial history developed long before this as well. So the wall did not really result in these fundamental bedrocks of Chinese thinking.

The idea that China was also in some sort of perpetual stagnant "dark age" for some 2,000 years is also incredibly reductive. It went through an immense amount of change and upheaval from the time the wall was initiated to the end of imperial rule in 1911. There were dozens of civil wars, changes in government, periods of rapid technological advancement and urbanization, the introduction of new religions and ideologies, and voyages all the way to the Middle East and East Africa. It is hard to say China was "kept in the dark ages" when for large amounts of time it was by far the richest nation on Earth while also being among the most technologically advanced.

I'm sure others with knowledge on more specific aspects of Chinese history could add to this as well. This is not to say that the wall and fortifications in general could not create some measure of complacency among certain rulers at certain times.

Apologies if this came off too harshly, but to narrow millennia of complex history to the extent the author is implying strikes me as very reductionist.

This is, to put it simply, complete nonsense. They're obviously trying to draw parallels with Trump's wall and other historical walls. The comparison with the Great Wall is particularly hamfisted - and relies upon stereotypical ideas of a stunted and stagnated China - even going so far as to say China was stagnated from the reign of it's first emperor.

it functioned as a psychological barrier that kept Chinese civilization isolated from foreign influences and the modernizing world. The wall kept China in the dark ages

China was not isolated from foreign influences for it's entire imperial history - which is what this sentence is implying. Trade, the exchange of foreign ideas like Buddhism, the political influence of foreign neighbours like the Koreans, Tibetans or the many peoples of the steppe, etc - all peaked after the Great Wall was conceived.

In fact Classical Chinese civilisation reached many of it's cultural, economic, literary and political high points well after Qin Shi Huang Di. The Tang and Song dyansties are commonly regarded as Golden Ages of Chinese power, prosperity and cultural achievement and they both occured more than a millenia after the Great Wall was first started.

This is merely someone trotting out archaic stereotypes about Chinese history to somehow fit an anti-Trump narrative.

Ivy Schweitzer is a professor of English. She is not a historian, she is not a Sinologist. Therefore, everything she writes about Chinese history needs to be taken with a huge boatload of salt, as she is not qualified to write about it in the first place.

To say that what she wrote is nonsense or inaccurate is being nice to her. She simply doesn't know what she's talking about and it does a great disservice to serious historians since she's propagating this idea of ancient China as this backwards and xenophobic place to people unfamiliar with Chinese history. Shame on her!

If Chinese emperors wanted to keep Chinese civilization isolated, they would have built walls in the Gansu Corridor to shut down the Silk Road. They would have built seawalls along the coastline to shut down the increasingly lively sea trade from the 10th century onwards. Only the Ming really attempted to shut down private ocean-going trade and control commerce, but its sea ban was as effective as Prohibition was in the United States. Rampant smuggling occurred and was condoned by the local government and the sea ban (instituted partly as a response to Japanese piracy) ironically led to more piracy. The government was forced to admit it was a failure in the 1560s and it was lifted. A similar sea ban was in force from 1647 to 1684 under the Qing, mainly as a military strategy against the Zheng family regime (a Ming loyalist movement) in Taiwan to deny them food and resources. The Qing attempted to control foreign trade as well, but at no point was the government trying to completely cut off contact with the outside world.

To say that China was in the dark ages, in spite of the fact that throughout the 2,000 years from the time Qin Shihuang first constructed the wall up until the fall of the Qing there had been numerous discoveries and inventions made by the Chinese, Joseph Needham must be rolling in his grave!

Too add to what others wrote about China and stagnation, the idea that the Great Wall somehow kept the area outside it from influencing China is also utter nonsense. In fact, most of the time China (or norther parts of it) was ruled by dynasties that were created by people outside of the wall and not Han Chinese...