Interestingly, at the height of the Roman Empire, your average Roman citizen in Italy had THE highest standard of living in European history, because of the way wealth from all of Rome's holdings funneled in. This seriously puts into perspective the extreme differences in regional GDP per capita as something down to other factors, but oh well.
Around 1 AD, around the time of the Ming and the height of the Romans, the Italian peninsula did indeed have the highest GDP per capita, followed by Greece, Egypt, the Levant, central North Africa, Iberia, then Gaul. Even Roman Belgium was as rich as China as a whole.
The difference between Europe and China is China pretty much entirely stayed the same from the Ming era to about the early 1800s(and Europe and MENA, although MENA started stagnating from 1200), but yes you are right that Rome is just a slightly improved version of Greeks and more importantly, previous Middle-Eastern civilizations. While the biggest and most important changes happened in Europe post 1400 AD, and the biggest post 1800s. Before 500 BC or so I would argue the Chinese had the most advanced civilization, but while being among the most intelligent, they are too content, compliant a people(also too isolationalist), i.e your example of the Emperor not letting the navy do anything, or an even more modern example of East Asians entirely abiding by and not even questioning their government's fascistic, anti-freedom COVID policies and simply following along like sheep(which is why China, Japan, Korea are pretty much all nearly COVID free).
copied from TA