What Xinanigans Is and Who It’s For
The real contest with China isn’t military, economic, or diplomatic — it’s systemic.
If you want to understand China’s strategy, you have to understand its system.
If you’re here, you already know the basics. You know what China does. You’ve seen the headlines, the military assessments, the threat memos that catalog actions without ever decoding the architecture behind them.
Xinanigans exists for people who need more.
For planners, policymakers, intelligence practitioners, special operators, and risk-focused leaders who know that China’s power is performed in public but built in private.
Here, we study the governing logic behind Beijing’s behavior.
Xinanigans analyzes China as a strategic operating system. A fusion of ideology, bureaucracy, narrative control, economic architecture, and political warfare that shapes behavior from internal repression to global influence.
Each dispatch maps the signals that matter:
how Xi’s personal anxieties shape strategic ambition
how bureaucratized loyalty distorts China’s risk calculus
how governance becomes a weapon and an export model
how cognitive domains and narrative infrastructure set escalation timelines
how legitimacy, fear, and performance shape national power
This is not commentary.
It is a field guide to the system the U.S. must compete against.
Some dispatches build frameworks. Some dissect doctrine. Some follow narrative shifts and propaganda tremors. Some cut sharply, because precision sometimes requires a blade.
All share one purpose: to expose the system behind Beijing’s behavior and illuminate where it’s strong, where it’s brittle, and where U.S. strategy has leverage.
What to expect
Tuesdays: strategic deep dives into doctrine, psychology, systemic analysis, and the seven domains of governance competition
Fridays: China This Week — a practitioner-grade brief tracking Chinese actions across military, economic, narrative, and irregular domains, including a dedicated Irregular Warfare Spotlight
Every dispatch is written for people who shape how we plan, deter, disrupt, and compete.
Welcome to Xinanigans.
Let’s begin.
