Starburst Over China takes Detective Jim Sato, a psychic cop, and Gilda Dobrowski, a small city psychic, back to StarCenter at Defense Intelligence Agency Headquarters to work on a Top Secret project to telepathically manipulate a Chinese bureaucrat in intelligence by applying their enhanced brainwaves as augmented by UB-X-00, a giant AI super computer, and Dr. Wayne Trunnell, its inventor. The plan is to stir up trouble--any kind of trouble--that the President of the United States can use in his dealings with China, the No. 2 power, in his bid to maintain U.S. hegemony.