Son of Heaven and Heavenly Qaghan: Sui-Tang China and its Neighbors by Pan Yihong: The conquest of the last of the Southern Dynasties by Sui in 589 brought to an end the Period of Disunion which had started with the collapse of Han in 220 C.E. The Sui dynasty was short-lived but laid the foundation for the Tang (618-907), an age of outstanding political and cultural achievement to which later generations looked back with nostalgia. The Sui-Tang period of over three centuries stands as a high point in the development of Chinese civilization. It not only restored the unity of the Chinese empire, it enlarged this concept which had been born in early Zhou, idealized by the Confucian thinkers of the Warring States and given definite form in Qin and Han. At the end of Tang the pattern of unity was again challenged, but the ideal persisted and has remained very much alive to the present day.
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Drompp et al. (1999) studied this question.