[stewbrew]

I don't know much about Chinese history but it seems to me that some sort of China as a unified entity existed for 1000s of years. In Europe on the other hand, borders were much more combated due to expansions of this or that empire (Rome, Turkey, France, Germany etc.) E.g. modern Germany wasn't unified as a nation until after the Napoleon wars in the 19th century. In that sense, the EU is a rather courageous project of countries that were enemies not so long ago.

[narutouzumaki]

The idea that China has always more or less been a unified entity over the ages is at least imprecise, if not completely wrong and propagated due to various reasons by the present day Communist party, but also any people that have a vested interest in China appearing unified and its people considered as one, united.

If you check out the Wikipedia article about Chinese history as a starting point, you will see that there have been many periods in which 'China' does not exist. Instead, there were several kingdoms, many different states, or there was only a single state but one could definitely put forth an argument that 'China' is not a direct descendant of that ancient entity.

Granted, the extent of fractionalisation regarding both time and geography might be less than in Europe, but it is far from some imagined 'continuued' existence of a Han Chinese state.

If you include places like Tibet, Guangdong, Taiwan, Manchuria and Xinjiang in this debate, this rings even truer.