That 6 out of 10 of the most deadly conflicts were Chinese civil wars is strong evidence China had a long history and a gigantic population relative to the rest of the world. (I think it's evidence that China was prone to fewer, larger wars.) To me, history is the study of people. If most people are in a one place then that is where most of the history is too.

I think the crux of our intuitive gap lies in the identification of useful lessons and models. If Chinese history is a useful source of models then I should be able to think of several off of the top of my head. Here is a core dump. I doubt you'll agree with all of these ideas, but I hope it will at least get you a better understanding of how I extract value from this body of knowledge. This isn't a list of everything I gain from Chinese history—just the stuff I get from Chinese history which I don't get from European history, Islamic history, American history, Russian history, prehistory, etc.

• The three historical figures I can think of who built giant institutions lasting thousands of years are Paul the Apostle, Mohammad and Qin Shihuang. Two of them formed religious organizations each based around a single book. The Effective Altruist community has an interest in creating institutions that last a long time. They should understand how the Qin Shihuang pulled it off.
• China has unique geography where large interconnected population centers are surrounded by territory historically impassible to civilized armies. You can't find this anywhere else in Eurasia. This dynamic does exist in the New World, but they lacked guns, germs and steel.
• As a consequence of China's unique geography, you get an interesting dynamic where the empire was challenged not by rival empires but instead by nomadic peoples and internal threats. It is true you find similar challenges by pastoralists in the rest of Eurasia, on the Arabian peninsula and even in colonial America. But in China the distinction between civilized and pastoral was most extremized. You get maximally isolated variables. I think this is one of the most interesting conflicts in history. I draw on ideas from it regularly when I think about grand strategy in the tech sector. Hackers are analogous to the Xiongnu. Tech monopolies are analogous to the empire.
• China does capitalism well without conflating capitalism with democracy. It's useful to separate the two in your mind. If you're interested in remaking a society then you should have a reference point for how China transitioned from the Great Leap Forward today's effective economy.
• Nor does China entangle religion with politics to the same extent you find in the Christian and Islamic worlds. This makes it easier to think about conflicts. I feel it produces a better understanding of political theory and strategy.
• Not coincidentally, the concept of wuwei is largely absent from the Western intellectual canon. There is Libertarianism, federalism and nonintervention, but I don't think they're as well-developed as a philosophy.
• The same goes for Daoist philosophical ideas. I feel they have a better-developed concept of "the map is not the territory". (This might be present in Indian history too. I don't know enough about India to say one way or the other.)
• In The Man on Mao's Right, Ji Chaozhu talks about farmers stealing pee from each other. The story helps me understand agriculture and poverty better than I did before I read it.
• China has the best poetry in the world. This counts as history because most of it was written centuries ago.
• Western people usually think of the rise of China as an anomaly. China was the global center of economic power for most of history. The "rise of China" is a reassertion to the mean.
• Lastly, China is on its way to eclipse the United States as the world's most greatest superpower. If you want an accurate model of where history is going then you need a model of China. Robust models of a region usually depend on knowing the region's history.