China Will Not Break Up...?

   I found the article "The ostrich's view of the world --- One: China will not break up" (The Economist, December 17th, 1998) very timely and a kind of exciting.  I, however, would like to add two more points on their view.
   They say, "93% of the population are Han Chinese," or "China is ethnically quite homogenous."  But are Han Chinese themselves are so homogenous?  From the mathematical linguistics point of view, the difference between Mandarine and Kantonese (both Chinese "dialects") is much wider than that between French and Italian (both Romance languages).  The Chinese language has 7 such big "dialects", and the difference among them is so wide that you can find superimposed dialogue on TV programs in China when a person speaks a "dialect" other than Mandarine.  We should not be surprised even if Han Chinese themselves were to be divided into more than 7, to say nothing of the independence of their "friendly" ethnic minorities.
   They also mention "pan-Chinese nationalism."  China certainly has her long history and culture including her unique writing system which is used by some other East Asian ethnic groups including Japanese people.  A third of Chinese millenia, however, have seen her people ruled by divided dynasties.  Even during united empire periods, significantly many centuries had substantially divided sovereign kingdoms. You can safely say that, in China, splittism is as strong as imperialistic "pan-Chinese nationalism."  When will her next split millenium begin?