[bane]

China's unification is a relatively "recent" phenomenon. Even the area we might notionally think of as "China" historically (maybe the Qin?) was quite small. There have been literally dozens of states within the boundaries of what we today call "China", and which follow some kind of historic thread of connection.

You'll notice on maps like this one [1] that only some of the parts of "China" are colored in throughout history. Well, what about the uncolored parts? People lived there too, and organized themselves into groups with governments and so on. We don't bother with them though because some modern government just washes all of them away into the dustbin of history.

In a similar fashion, most people don't consider the Eastern Roman empire "Rome" after the fall of the Western Empire. But it was no more or less "Rome" than say, the Eastern Jin was.

Even today, China isn't unified, Taiwan operates as an independent entity.

1 - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Territor...