Chimerica begins in 1989 in China's Tiananmen Square when a young American photojournalist records a slice of history as tanks thunder through Beijing and soldiers ram into the door of his hotel. Twenty years later, he covers the presidential election, which is marred by a debate about cheap labor and the outsourcing of American jobs to Chinese factories. He then becomes obsessed with a cryptic message left in a Chinese newspaper and sets out on a journey to discover who the man in the photo is who heroically stood in front of the tank.