[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.