Seven continents. Seven Chinese kings. A benevolent rule and a stable, sensual, high-tech society. But the T'ang overlords no longer control all three hundred levels of City Earth. Revolution is brewing. As the all-powerful Seven plot the boldest imaginable counterstrike, a plan to control the minds of all humankind, Chung Kuo speeds toward cataclysm, and the final game between East and West, between the privileged Above and the downtrodden Below--a monumental confrontation with forty billion lives in the balance.