Sui Unification of China

The Sui dynasty reunified China in 589 CE when its armies captured the southern capital of Jiankang, present-day Nanjing, and received the surrender of the last emperor of the southern Chen dynasty, ending nearly three centuries of political division known as the Northern and Southern dynasties period. The dynasty had been founded eight years earlier, in 581, when the general Yang Jian, who took the throne name Emperor Wen, usurped the Northern Zhou state; his conquest of Chen completed China's reunification under a single centralized government for the first time since the fall of the Han dynasty. Although the Sui dynasty itself proved short-lived, collapsing within three decades under the strain of ambitious construction projects including the Grand Canal and costly military campaigns in Korea, its reunification of China and its reorganized administrative and legal systems laid the direct institutional foundation for the following Tang dynasty, one of the most powerful and influential periods in Chinese history.