I can't believe that other reviewers are rating this highly. It really falls down with respect to his other books.Weaknesses:* Other books (particularly Cardinal of the Kremlin) have elaborate spy-counterspy operations. In this one, an overtly foreign agent walks in and finds crown jewels completely unguarded. Unbelievable. Also, does China really let foreign news vans drive around unmonitored?* Russia is given a free pass on Chechnya and the Mafia, even as China's lack of respect for human rights is savaged, in order to justify the plot.* Several characters repeat the same aphorisms and quotations to the point where it's distracting. None of the quotations are attributed, an odd lapse for a detail man like Clancy.To me it looks like Clancy's suffering from the grandiosity that many writers of ongoing series fall into. I thought his switch to John Clark in Without Remorse and Rainbow Six was a cure for that, but apparently not.