Does China Have "Allies"?

"It's a story. Oh, we've all heard a thousand times a perfectly normal, widely liked, completely unobjectionable person experiences a rapid and positive change in their station. Maybe they come into a lot of money, maybe they're granted some huge promotion, maybe they 're elected into public office.

And all of a sudden, they turn into an arsehole. There are time, once freely given, must now be scheduled, and only if you're important enough to deserve a meeting." Their support, once shown to their friends, constantly without expectation, now must be bought or won through glad-handing or constant flat-tree.

Sometimes, by the end of the story, that wayward character learns their lesson, and sometimes they don't.