Thanks for the comments. I haven't attempted a review of all the available textbooks, although that is an obvious step one could take. Valeri Hansen's approaches in all her books are similar to mine--indeed, there are lots of specialized and even more general works that challenge the paradigm I'm critiquing in the review.

As for terminology: I say use China as a rough geographic, not a political term. One could do the same with Korea or Xinjiang (as I did in my book Eurasian Crossroads). In doing so, we will say that Xixia, Nanzhao and even Xiongnu were states in China, China-based states. We teach the daotong lineage of "dynasties" as a historiographical phenomenon, but not as the continuous history of some metaphysical entity called "China." The main thing is to guard against the impression that China is a continuous unitary political entity.

I changed the wording re. Xi's waiving of the established norm of term limits for himself. We'll see whether he ever retires or not!