While we all know China is performing well at the pro level, its civ design is flawed imo. The main issue is with their dynasty mechanics and their early game eco being too strong.
Their dynasty mechanics is outdated to be fair. It might sound overpowered to be able to build all 2 landmarks at once and obtain a dynasty bonus on top of it, but with the growing understanding of the game of the playerbase, paying full price for the second landmark is almost equivalent to giving in tempo to your opponent because of how many units China can spam with those resources, and how much tax you can collect in return from making these units. It would be even better to simply consider aging up if you had that much of an eco lead. That’s why most players end up getting into Song dynasty at best for most games, as bbq is relatively cheaper and China kind of needs it to secure resources. And to be honest, each single Chinese landmark effect is intentionally made weaker except for imperial academy, which is perhaps the best feudal landmark in the game.
Now here comes the second issue. Because the imperial academy and the IOs (early eco) are too powerful, their units can’t be made too strong (their UUs are locked behind later dynasties anyway), so China becomes a civ that spams generic units to death, similar to the problem with HRE. This civ looks good and unique on paper, but not as good and unique when played.
I think a nerf to imperial academy and a limit to the number of IOs in feudal age can be implemented. As a compensation, give a discount to the second landmark in the same age to make dynasty transition a bit smoother and make dynasty-related UUs more accessible (buff or rework to their UUs is also welcome as their stats are really bad atm).
Btw, we no longer at the siege meta, so there’s no point to forbid supervising the astronomical clocktower anymore.