This is a fiction that was created by Chinese nationalists [1] [2] [3] over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries.
"Dialects" between provinces can be very different and mutually unintelligible verbally. In many other contexts they would have been considered different languages, but since the imperial bureaucracy and the Chinese writing system helped maintain a sense of unity in spite of it we don't.
All this isn't to say Han identity is any less real than any other identity. The idea of "ethnic identity" is fundamentally constructed and imaginary across the board. That's also why it's not a great explanatory factor for much of anything. These categories aren't primordial, they're usually reflective of the very thing for which you're trying to use it as an explanation.
Yeah, I'm aware of that, however, most Chinese still consider themselves Han Chinese. So even if it is somewhat of a fiction, most people within China consider it true, which is what is relevant for the purposes of having a national identity.
My point is, they consider it true because of the country's political cohesion. If the country wasn't politically cohesive, the ethnic identity wouldn't be either. The unified identity is explained by the political homogeneity as much as it explains it.
I think the causality works both ways. If you have an ethnic identity, it's easier to assimilate new arrivals, especially when you are numerically superior. This has been the history of China for a long time.
This is a fiction that was created by Chinese nationalists [1] [2] [3] over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries.
"Dialects" between provinces can be very different and mutually unintelligible verbally. In many other contexts they would have been considered different languages, but since the imperial bureaucracy and the Chinese writing system helped maintain a sense of unity in spite of it we don't.
All this isn't to say Han identity is any less real than any other identity. The idea of "ethnic identity" is fundamentally constructed and imaginary across the board. That's also why it's not a great explanatory factor for much of anything. These categories aren't primordial, they're usually reflective of the very thing for which you're trying to use it as an explanation.
[1] https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/chinesestudies/2016/09/23/863... [2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/20025378?seq=1 [3] https://escholarship.org/uc/item/07s1h1rf