Xi Is Getting What He Wants

Once Upon a Time in the Middle East, a movie that premiered in China last month and is coming to the United States in October, is about a Chinese chef who moves to the Middle East to find work, only to become a savior for the locals amid the chaos of an American invasion. This box-office hit has earned rave reviews in China—especially from China’s government, which has promoted the film’s themes of Chinese peacefulness versus American warmongering. The film “casts US as i