Chinese feudalism in the form that Europe took actually has a long and storied history, and you can imagine that some innovative leader could actually carry that out.
Fundamentally, Confucianism is an ideology that is in love with the idea of the 'Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors', in which the basic idea was that the local kings/chieftains 'abdicated' their throne to another person who had the 'love of the people'. So that by itself already creates a stronger ideological basis for an HRE-like government than Europe ever had.
The Eastern Zhou Dynasty (i.e. Spring and Autumn period) had a sort-of analogy to this, in the idea of the 'Dominant Leader' or Bazhu, who basically was a Shogun who, through war or 'superior moral authority', was 'promoted' by the various feudal lords of the Zhou Dynasty to help keep the peace for the King of Zhou. There were five acknowledged Dominant Leaders during the Spring and Autumn period, although one can easily list a couple more who were recognized by a couple of regional powers. If that had developed further, you might see an elected Shogunate in China, with the Zhou King as a figurehead.
With the fall of the Qin in 206 BC, Xiang Yu declared himself the 'Dominant King of the West Chu' and gave subsidiary titles to the nobility of the states that Qin Shi Huang destroyed - so there was a 'King of Zhao', 'King of Chu', 'King of Qi' etc, which indicates that Xiang Yu sort of saw himself as the primus inter pares of Chinese lords, rather than some sort of God-Emperor... which is reasonable, given that his revolt was supported by reactionaries/nationalists from Chu who wanted to return to the pre-Qin status quo. If Xiang Yu had defeated Liu Bang, and (likely given his nature) proven incompetent to rule, you could see a coalition of the other states gang up and force him to nominate a successor from the nobility of the other states, rather than his son... which would give you the precedent for an HRE-esque China.
Liu Bang, although declaring himself Emperor of the Han, kept alive the idea of feudal government by giving land to so-called 'Different-Surnamed Kings', which he quickly reversed by killing off the lot of them and replacing them with his sons and relatives. By the time of his great-grandson Han Jingdi, these kings had grown powerful enough to rebel against their nominal liege, which was only put down with some difficulty. At any point until the quashing of the Rebellion, you could argue that had the local princes won rather than the central government, you would have had a new Emperor installed who very much owed his throne to the local princes - and this could have set off a wave of decentralization that ends up with an HRE-like situation.
The last real PoD comes to the end of the Three Kingdoms, and it's ironic that you imply what Sun Quan did was strange, because in essence Jin Wudi OTL basically did the same thing, re-establishing autonomous princedoms everywhere in his Empire and trying to weaken the central government (in reaction to the fact that the Jin basically took over Cao Wei by taking over the central government). This ended in tears because Jin Wudi's successor was mentally ill and the princes basically fought savagely against each other and destroyed the Empire in the process. But if Emperor Wu had a relatively incompetent Emperor instead, you could imagine that you could have local princes draining away the power of the central government again, which could have led to another HRE-scenario.
As an addendum, the early Ming also did what the Jin Dynasty did by giving land to the sons of Zhu Yuanzhang, but by that time I think the Confucian attitude was too deeply entrenched to accomodate an HRE situation, not to mention the fact that within 10 years of Zhu Yuanzhang's death his son basically revolted against his nephew and usurped the throne, becoming the Emperor Yongle.
