The way I think of China in comparison to Europe is basically, what if the Roman Empire survived until modernity - i.e. a central government for territories the

The way I think of China in comparison to Europe is basically, what if the Roman Empire survived until modernity - i.e. a central government for territories the size and importance of Europe and North Africa combined. This kind of centralistic system would probably also have continued Antique knowledge on a similar trajectory, but then stagnated, since fragmented societies with enough wealth to spread around simply create more opportunities to revolutionize various scientific fields. So yeah, I think you can see it as something not up to a few variables, but you could also, as an example, pinpoint it to the Mongolian invasion creating the Yuan dinasty, which basically adopted Chinese culture and continued the empire, rather than fragmenting it like what the Germanic invasions did to Rome. This might have come down to a couple of decisions by Kublai Khan.