There are tons of interesting details as you point out, but I will still maintain that would not have mattered if China didn't have its bureacracy or its unity in regards to industrialization. Without enough suitable rivers to drive water wheels you cannot build large number of factories.
To me this becomes a bit like arguing whether a country could have had steam powered engines if politics was just different, while an obvious limit such as no access to coal or iron is core issue. Not saying that was the case for China, but it is just to illustrate the point that natural resources are the fundamental decider. Politics and organization is secondary IMHO.
I will also add that sea based trade in Europe is not merely an outcome of being fractured, but by the fact that Europe was always far more commercial oriented than China thanks to better ocean navigation opportunities. The Roman Empire e.g. as far more commercially oriented than the Han Chinese empire. That is in large part due to the mediterranian which acted as superhighway for trade. Ocean based transport is estimated to have been 4x more effective than river based transport which is what China must have relied on more.
Again a core driver here is not politics and policy but fundamental geographica differences. European countries have a lot more coastline than China. China is much more of an inland nation. Long before colonization European nations were already well developed as seafaring commercial societies. Venetians, Greeks, Dutch and the English all built their prosperity on sea based wealth, long before colonizing.
My own home country Norway, was never a colonizer but seafaring was our bread and butter. Norway could never have survived without ocean based trade. Norway has a cold climate and poor soil which does not let people survive on domestically grown food. Only 2.% of Norway is suitable for agriculture. The Netherland and Greece also arove under similar conditions. Neither could surive on domestic food production. Trade was an absolute necessity for survival.
China in contrast with it extremely rich high yield rice agriculture and better climate can sustain itself much better without large scale trade.
I think many of these underlying physical difference serve as dominos or ripple effects that cause the higher level difference in political organization and political choices that the East and West made. Europeans could colonize in large part because they had very strong seafaring capability, which China lacked. I am discussing this more in detail here: https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/how-ships-and-forts-created-western-dominance-b5f396344d4b
I think we agree on the high level stuff in terms of different politicla organization and drive. I agree that Chinese society has been driven more by top-down decision while Europe has been driven more by bottom-up decision making. The difference is that I think those difference stem from geographical and climatic differences.
From studying this stuff, what I find interesting is that the West seen from todays eyes was always more capitalist, while China even before communism was a concept operated more in a communist fashion. Modern day chine like ancient China gave/give more power and a bigger role to the state compared to the West.
