The historical events in southeastern China and in the outlying island of Taiwan across the strait from that part of China caused Chinese understanding of quarantine to be frontier-related. In other words, quarantine serves the political purpose of stabilising the chaos and the at times deadly conflicts of frontier life. Given this history, it comes as no surprise that a leading journal on quarantine in today’s China is called Chinese journal of frontier health and quarantine, because the historicity of the Chinese understanding and interpretation of quarantine is founded upon the two concepts in the journal title being linked together.