It is very easy to over-rate chinese technology over the last 1500 years. They made many inovations, but the culture suppressed them and they were not available as technologies.
I was working on a concept that, like book 3, used several areas of tech and averaged the level. My parralel tech levels were
Information Technology
Tools
Materials
Agriculture/Food technology
Energy
Transportation
Medecine
Weapons
Using TL A as the threshold of intersteller travel, I figure
0- (Pebbles & twigs, grunts & gestures)
1- Paleolithic (language, stone and wood tools, boats, fire, cooperative hunter gatherers)
2- Neolithic (compound tools, domesticated animals, subsistance agriculture)
Paleolithic and Neolithic ought to be at least three, but I was running out of TL
3- Bronze (copper & bronze, chariots and carts, writing)
4- Iron (Iron and steel, the arch, sailing ships, geometry, limited wind & water power)
5- Rennaissance and pre-industrial, (global sailing ships, printing press, Calculus, cannon)
6- Steam & clockwork (steamships, trains, early industrialization, telegraph/telephone)
7- oil/electric (radio & tube electronics, cars, aircraft, submersibles)
8- Atomic & "space" (Jets, nuclear fission, true submarines, solid-state electronics)
9- Information age (integrated circuits, personal comunications, fusion power)
Right now, the Western powers & pacific rim countries are crossing from 8 to 9. Tne "second world" like Russia, India, Brazil and Argentina are 8. China is 7 The "Third World" is divided between 4-6. I think for a planetary rating you should look at the technologhy available to the most sophisticated 20% of the population, so Terra in 2000 is an "8" by my system.