Why can a class not be defined as protected?

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Because it makes no sense.

Protected class member (method or variable) is just like package-private (default visibility), except that it also can be accessed from subclasses.
Since there’s no such concept as ‘subpackage’ or ‘package-inheritance’ in Java, declaring class protected or package-private would be the same thing.

You can declare nested and inner classes as protected or private, though.

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