More than thirty years after a famed Boston art collection is stolen, Washington learns that it has turned up in the People's Republic of China—just as Sino-American relations are at a tipping point. To retrieve the artifacts, a covert mission is handed to retired military sleuths Julian Peale and Chinese-American Grace Ho, both art specialists. From Washington to China's great western desert, and from Boston's lofty art museums to modernist Shanghai, the search is on. Beijing has meanwhile launched an audacious plan to recover lost Chinese art stolen by the West a century earlier. Not only do Peale and Ho have to iron out their own cultural differences and approaches to espionage, the highest circle of the Beijing government is caught in a web of intrigue between the top leader and two powerful women vying for control of China's cultural policy. From the annals of art history to China's world ambitions through "soft power," The Silk Road Affair travels a historic legacy up to the present, from the Han Dynasty to the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square—and on to China Inc. Recovery of the stolen art, its return to the United States, and the political direction of the world's largest country hang in the balance as Peale and Ho wind their way through the puzzle that is modern China.