China 2026: Risk Is the Strategy
A note from the author
Each December, geopolitical risk consultancies publish their “Top 10 Risks for the Coming Year.” Markets read them. Governments skim them. Risk professionals grumble about them because the generic summaries rarely help anyone who actually has to plan. Few remember them by February.
This series is not that.
I wrote my share of those lists in my consulting years, and the experience taught me how easily insight gets replaced by abstraction.
I don’t write Xinanigans to count risks. I write it to decode them by asking what China’s leadership believes, fears, and refuses to see.
Over the next five weeks, I’ll build a complete analytical framework for understanding Chinese strategic behavior. Each dispatch adds a different lens to help you decode Beijing’s decision-making.
Here’s how I’ll build it:
Dec 9 – Cognitive Layer: The 10 Most Dangerous Ideas in Beijing Right Now
Dec 16 – Structural Layer: Top 10 Fault Lines China Can’t Acknowledge (But You Should Watch Closely)
Dec 23 – Analytical Layer: What We Got Wrong About China in 2025
Dec 30 – Predictive Layer: Five Strategic Gambits Beijing Will Attempt in 2026 (and Their Hidden Weaknesses)
Jan 6 – Contingency Layer: The 7 Unthinkables: China’s Black Swan Scenarios for 2026
Together, these five mental models create a comprehensive toolkit: how Beijing thinks, where it’s fragile, where we’ve been blind, what it will try next, and what surprises could upend everything.
A quick note on schedule:
China This Week will skip the holiday Fridays (today and December 26). The Tuesday deep dives continue uninterrupted, including the full end-of-year series.
Coming in January (Subscribers Only):
The 2026 China Risk Tracker.
A condensed, visual briefing document that compiles all five dispatches into a single strategic reference file.
A briefing tool for serious thinkers: scannable, pattern-rich, and built to help you track belief systems, monitor fractures, and scenario-test Beijing’s next moves.
It’s not “just” analysis. It’s foresight infrastructure.
Let’s out-think the analysts who play it safe.
Let’s build strategic imagination.
V/r,
Erika