The air thundered with the roar of turbofan jets and stank of jet fuel despite the buffeting South China Sea winds. Ji stood next to Admiral Deng Zilong, the commander of the South Sea Fleet. Admiral Ji was only an observer of today’s exercises, since China’s only operational aircraft carrier was technically under Deng’s command. But the two men were former shipmates, old friends, and, most important, allies in a cause greater than themselves. Like Ji, Deng believed President Sun’s anticorruption reforms were too little too late. The Communist Party’s corruption and ineptitude threatened the very legitimacy of the state and the Party. Failure to forcefully and decisively resolve the ongoing Uyghur rebellion, the latest Hong Kong protests, or the reunification with Taiwan threatened China’s hard-won unity. They both fervently believed that only a corps of uncorrupted military officers led by the unwavering Admiral Ji could prevent China from falling into prerevolutionary chaos and return her to greatness in the twenty-first century.
