If you try to go Elzbach, you're spending a lot more resources on imping, and the Chinese can punish that. So if you want to imp, you have to spend as little resources as you can on it, so you want Swabia.

There's some situations that Burgrave can feel a bit weird against and Chinese is one of them because they have a mini Burgrave effect of their own — they could supervise. So what they can do is just supervise crossbows as a counter, and all of a sudden your play starts to fall apart.

Lets say you split the deer 50/50: as HRE you get income quicker, but Chinese gets 20% extra so the economy lasts longer, about an extra thousand food.

I'm not totally crazy about a dark age spear rush against China just because Imperial Academy means they don't care as much.

HRE isn't better in Imperial than China. HRE's advantage is getting to Imperial a lot quicker. China's advantage is more prolonged upon that period. Yuan Dynasty in itself pretty much just relegates HRE, removing the one perk they have around their military force, actually just outdoing them because March and Drills only affects infantry while Yuan affects all.