But civ 6 intentionally displayed 2 emperors KNOWN for their expansionary militarism, Qin Shi Huang and Kublai Khan and slapped them with 1 defensive unit and 1 defensive stall tile, on top of wonder spamming ability of the builder and dynastic cycle abilities that inherently detracts from any sort of domination play style. While I get that the crouching tiger and the great wall of china was intended to represent china as a whole and not just one dynasty, if they were gonna do that they should have at least made a Zhuge Liang or some Song/Ming civ leader option.
Even when Qin built the wall it was primarily meant to forward expand the Qin territory into the Xiongnu territory, contrasting to the different version of Great Wall of China that everyone is aware of today that was built more south and for defensive purposes under the Ming dynasty. While some dynasties did act like that(Song/Ming, coincidentally they were some of the worst dynasties in chinese history), Qin was the exact opposite and engaged in punitive expansionary campaigns. The great wall tile, which is a massive $$$ boost(and culture) and a defensive tile, on top of the crouching tiger gives off this idea that China is like this insular defensive civilization that keeps to themselves and stalls out to the mid/late game for a win. If you consider how china under QSH is played in civ 6, the 2 main victory types that china is advantaged and goes for are either culture or science due to the wonder spamming ability Qin Shi Huang gets with his builders. The sum of these 2 armies were proclaimed to number about 800k troops, which is similar to the total troops he used in the wars of unification. The second army would be for expanding down south under the general Zhao Tuo where he made it all the way to modern day north vietnam by the time the Qin dynasty collapsed. One was made for destroying the Xiongnu(what some people think are the precursor to the Huns) in the north commanded by the general Meng Tian, who was mostly responsible for the connecting the walls of the 3 states Qin, Zhao, Yan into what would be the Great Wall of China. On top of that he spent his life continuing the Qin trend of militarism where Qin was under total war mobilization under his entire rule, starting with the unification wars against the 6 states and immediately right after unification he made 2 armies. While by the time of Qin Shi Huang(238 BC when he was officially crowned) these laws were more relaxed, legalism would end up being promoted as the state philosophy at the expense of all other political philosophies(where their books were burned under the order of Li Si). Farming was highly valued because it was essential to supplying troops, those who gave more than average to the state would be exempt from corvee and there were tax incentives made to push a nuclear family model so people would expand out and farm more areas, you get the picture. Merchants and architects, those that did not contribute to the state were enslaved, and the law was made to be equally applied to all to maintain order. The people were mass conscripted and soldiers would get money and political ranks based on how many kills they had in war. In history, the Qin state(which then became the Qin dynasty) became a highly bureaucratic state that prioritized militarism above all else, starting with Shang Yang's legalist reforms in 359 BC under Duke Xiao of Qin. As someone who has studied some warring states period history I find the depiction of Qin Shi Huang to be way too inaccurate in civ 6 and a rather missed opportunity for a more accurate depiction.