The world would be a very different place if China hadn’t managed to end up with some really ignorant egocentric rulers along the way.
The great First Emperor did major damage to China’s future when his paranoia drove him to destroy records of things rulers before himself had done.
China and Europe were on about an equal footing in 1000 A.D., with other civilizations not far behind. Europe had a few factors in it’s favor early in the second millenium — competition among peoples locally, a religion that encouraged finding new places to proselytize. Some scholars even posit that the Black Death, in giving Europe a drop in population and hence excess productive capacity, led to the free time needed to cook up the Renaissance.