Not quite. Rome is a polity created by a city: it started out as a humble city-state, and then expanded to the point at which it became a sprawling empire. Depending on how and what you define a civilisation as being, it either ended with that polity around the time of Odoacer or continued until anywhere from 1453 until 1922 at the absolute latest.
Zhongguo is a slightly different concept, as it is best understood in European terms as a continent rather than a nation. Our contemporary conception of continents is a European construct: prior to the influx of Western ideas in the 17th Century, the Chinese had no real concept of Asia, as Europeans would understand it. To the Chinese, Zhongguo itself was a continent (To this day, the Chinese term for "Mainland China" is Zhongguo Dalu, which literally means "The Great Continent of the Middle Kingdom/State" -- or if you will, the Continent of China) and everything outside it was extra-continental. Indeed, prior to the Qing Dynasty it would have been incomprehensible for a Chinese person to refer to Taiwan as part of Zhongguo as Taiwan was an island and therefore extra-continental.
Exactly Rome as a civilisation cannot be separated from Rome the state. Because the former was a pure creation of the latter.
China the civilisation predates China the state.
This is a double standard true. But it is also a historical fact.
For me this is the core reason why one survived where the other did not. For Rome to be brush off it only needed a new state willing to create another civilisation from its ashes.
To speak of Chinese civilisation as you or the OP speak of it is to speak of Roman civilisation in the loosest possible sense, as if it were synonymous with what we might call European civilisation: a series of peoples and cultures with different languages and customs united by a common cultural heritage to a past Empire. Of course, that isn't the definition you use for Roman civilisation but it is the definition you are using for Chinese civilisation, and it's this double standard which presents a problem. If we accept that you can use one definition of civilisation for Rome and a separate one for China then the OP's question is rendered moot.
Allow me to illustrate my point my means of a question: when do you (or the OP) consider Roman civilisation to have ended, and why?
This is indeed a double-standard. Simply because Chinese still call themselves Han to these day and maintain a belief and actual continuity with the Han millenia before wherehas nobody today consider himself as Roman and Rome is indeed considered a dead civilisation by pretty much anyone.
For me it is nothing suprising because they are fundamental civilisational difference between China and the civilisations descended from Mesopotamia. Rome is just one of the last hegemonic empire that started as a small city build and died off.
Also I don't understand the Zhongguo point. The term could have quite different meaning depending on the era and how it is used. And yes Taiwan was never considered inside the term before the Qing for the simple reason that it never was part of China before them.
If it ended with the polity of Rome (ie. the WRE) then how come you consider Chinese civilisation to have transcended the collapse of a multitude of different polities whereas Roman civilisation ends after the collapse of one? What makes the Qing Dynasty a continuation but the Kommenus or Carolingian not?
If it ended with the sack of Constantinople, then how come Byzantium is seen as a continuation of the Roman Empire but the Ottoman Empire is not? If the argument is that the former were a nomadic tribe with a different language, religion and customs and therefore don't count then what does that say of the Yuan?
Yes the Roman Empire ended in 1453 because the last (serious) polity that could trace its lineage to the Roman city-state died that year.
Why did it not last its periods of disunity ? First perhaps because it simply never reunited in the first place ? Ever thought of that ?
Otherwise let me repeat myself since you seem to not have read the post you quoted:
One explanation is because the elites in Europe did not consider themselves as Roman. They were Franks, Goth, English, Norse etc. And clearly claimed a lineage that was not Roman this in turn influence the local populace who stopped indentifying as Romans and became French, Spanish, English etc.
The other is that in fact the Roman Empire DID NOT FALL. and this played a huge part in how the west viewed itself in opposition to the empire especially in Italy.
If you are Roman then you owe fealty to the Emperor be it the real one in Constantinople or the Anti-Emperor in Germany.
But if you are not Roman then you don't owe those empire nothing. This is separatism 101.
Oh and why the Ottoman Empire was not a continuation of the Empire ? Perhaps because they never pretended to be in the first place, hmm ? I know that Mehmet claimed the Imperium but his successor discontinued and prefered to focus on their Caliphate heritage than proclaim to be Rome.
Same with all the states that claimed Emperorship afterhand. They never considered themselves to be the Roman state reborn so why should I even spare the thought ?
If we take the loosest possible definition and say it ended with the end of the hegemony of Roman culture then surely it is Roman civilisation which has outlived Chinese civilisation and not the other way around? After all, the script of the Romans is still in common use today whereas the majority of Chinese use a script which was invented in the 1950's. Even Traditional Chinese only dates back as far as the 5th century and would be unintelligible to anyone born before the middle of the Han Dynasty at absolute earliest. Latin continued to be used as a lingua franca by European elites well into the 19th Century while the spoken language of the Tang and Song (let alone that of the Han or Qin) was replaced by Mandarin at some point during the early Ming Dynasty; Mandarin is to it as French is to Latin, while the ancestor language of Middle Chinese is patronisingly relegated to dialect status by a majority of Chinese, including by some of those who speak it. The Romans established a state church which is still very much in existence today (and much in the same form it was established in) whereas no comparative Chinese religious institution exists. Even the last states modelled on the Empire and the last European Caesars managed to outlast their Chinese counterparts, if only by a handful of months.
By the loosest possible definition we all bow down to the supremacy of the Mesopotamian city-states who gave us everything from Agriculture to science and writing yet they are just as dead as the Romans.
When you use definition so loosely then really everything can be rationalised.
So no, there really is no big difference between the two irrespective of which conception of civilisation you use, provided you apply that standard consistently.
And yet people in China still call themselves Han and still live in a unitary nation (with two states hehe) more than two thousands years after the Qing.
Whereas the people around the mediterreanean never saw an unified Roman empire again since 476. And when I go to Carthage, Alexandria, Constantinople, Antioch, Barcelona or Cordoba among the biggest cities of the Imperium back then and still among the biggest cities around the mediterranean I have lots of trouble finding Romans. Seems like only in Rome I have success back where everything started indeed.
