Matt Huang, a young investment professional, arrives in Beijing before the 2008 Olympics aiming for gold. He hopes to win lucrative deals to impress his western bosses at All-Stellar, a high-profile, US$880 million private equity fund.
Matt's first challenge is to gain the trust of Chairman Zhou, a militant entrepreneur whose firm Dominant Duck becomes All-Stellar's first China investment. But he soon finds himself thwarted at every turn, as he grapples with conflicting interests and a complex web of special guanxi (connections).
A cataclysmic turn of events on the cusp of Dominant Duck's highly-anticipated initial public offering turns Matt into a key pawn in a hair-raising corporate takeover battle across China. Pressurized to the point of being hospitalized, held hostage in a duck slaughtering house, betrayed, and disgraced, he still clings on to the dream of becoming a young Mr. China—until his princeling-linked nemesis shows his expert hand.