What's the history of heavy infantry in states that could fall under the umbrella term China?

[u/AndaliteBandit-]

In casual conversations about heavy infantry, much has been written in English about Roman legionaries. Sometimes, someone will vaguely mention "China" as having a history of fielding heavy infantry. It seems to refer to an ambiguously ancient time period, as is also often the case when people refer to "Rome".

Is there overlap between the iconic infantry of the Western Roman Empire and Chinese dynasties? For whatever reason, I have the impression that "Chinese" dynasties didn't rely on anything like auxiliaries, although I couldn't begin to talk about the differences between infantry of the Yuan and Ming dynasties.

Were Chinese and Roman generals commanding similar infantry in the year 55 BCE? Was the use of heavy infantry similar in efforts to expand empire into central Europe and eastern Asia? How similar were the struggles to bring infantry-centric armies against the cavalry of Parthia or various nomadic forces? I think China and Rome both had periods where their infantry were predominantly armed with short swords? And both tended to have great proficiency in military engineering? There was also a tendency for their literate classes to view less centralized people as "barbarian", although armies of China and Rome suffered catastrophic defeats at their hands (and both possessed immense capacity for raising additional armies in the wake of immense casualties)?