Abstract: China's ancient unified state is marked by centralization and bureaucratization.Its effective integration and long-term governance of a vast territory and populous society surpass the organizational and technological capacities typical of the agrarian age,revealing strong state resilience.The “great unity” narrative is both a theoretical system that justifies the legitimacy of this unified state form and an ideational bond that sustains it over a long term.Formed through the state-sanctioned Confucian ideological construction in the Han dynasty,this narrative rests on a stable deep structure comprising a political narrative of “all under Heaven as one family,”an ethics-centered moral narrative,and a historical narrative of civilizational continuity,thereby providing a framework for descriptive analysis and normative evaluation in politics,society,and history.Although the “great unity” narrative and the unified state form are mutually interwoven,they also contain tensions between “the Heaven” and “China”,between “family–state” and “state”,between unity and plurality,and between continuity and change.Owing to the role of the literati-official stratum,the narrative's ideational system couples stably with the unified state form.Under the dual forces of tension and coupling,they engage in an active,agentic interaction that ultimately manifests as the state resilience sustaining the long-term continuity of the unified state form.

Key words: great unity, “great unity” narrative, unified states, state form, state resilience