I've seen unironic arguments that the Roman Empire, HRE, British Empire, etc should all be basically considered dynasties of the same empire the way the various states that ruled over China all get treated as dynasties of one empire, though I believe at least some of that particular point is to highlight how eurocentric historiography is all too willing to endlessly subdivide and see distinctions in European states while elsewhere it just sees one mass of people that's just ruled by one family or another. Though I believe the modern historiographic standard is to apply the same level of nuance and detail that historical European states got to other places.