Has China been protecting its citizens and companies all along?

There is a definite benefit (or some would argue side effect) to protectionism. Compared to other countries, with respect to technology, they have successfully built their own indigenous search engines, social networks, e-commerce, manufacturing etc. While most of the rest of the world is dependent on the US.

Bunnie Huang had a very good post on this http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040

Protectionism is a side effect of Nationalism. And as Nicholas Negroponte put it - "Nationalism is the biggest disease on the planet, Nations have the wrong granularity. They’re too small to be global and too big to be local, and all they can think about is competing."