Reddit reviews When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order: Second Edition

I think Hero served up ambiguity in spades instead of being a straight-up pro-Chinese unification flick. From the main character's "name" as Nameless to the expressions of doubt in both Nameless and the Emperor as the dialogue proceeded, it wasn't cut and dry. If you want further reading on it, Mark Brent Ellsworth's excellent thesis on exploring the film is a great way to start.

For starters, Zhang Yimou had a very contentious history with censors and many of his films were either outright banned or blocked from public viewership. From this, one cannot safely assume Zhang is just some hack pumping out another patriotic film.

Secondly, Zhang was very much aware this film was going to be shown to the West, to a Western audience which was going to interpret what was given to them in English - especially at the end where the on-screen text explained how events in the film were "more than two thousand years ago... But
even now when the Chinese speak of their country they call it... Our Land".

Our Land came from the translation of tian xia, but once again I didn't find this a completely accurate translation. To put it literally, tian xia means "all under heaven". Of course, when this concept was first coined thousands of years ago, there was no knowledge of people outside of China or the Chinese themselves, but yet as they encountered outsiders, they still kept to the meaning of tian xia instead of wo guo 我国/my country or guojia lingtu 国家领土/national territory. This lends to the assumption that everything under heaven belongs to them. I don't think I need to go on with the Middle Kingdom Mentality, which is best described by Martin Jacques.

With all these factors considered, Zhang's hidden meaning to the West was to reveal China's future intention to reclaim all under heaven as their own. The Chinese state isn't dumb, and I heard from some academics that several officials picked up on the subtext but didn't want to pursue it as they didn't want to mar China's greatest cultural export at the time.

This book, while being controversial, discussed this idea with very detailed background study.
http://www.amazon.com/When-China-Rules-World-Western/dp/0143118005

Wow you really are full of yourself. Honestly, you're not coming off as very knowledgeable of anything, quite frankly.

Read:

https://www.amazon.com/Destined-War-America-Escape-Thucydidess/dp/0544935276

https://www.amazon.com/Can-Asians-Think-Kishore-Mahbubani/dp/9814276014

https://www.amazon.com/When-China-Rules-World-Western/dp/0143118005

https://www.amazon.com/World-Disarray-American-Foreign-Policy/dp/0399562362

https://www.amazon.com/Lee-Kuan-Yew-Insights-International/dp/0262019124