Happy New Year from Xinanigans!
Jan 2, 2026
At the start of 2025, the dominant predictions about China were familiar ones: either imminent collapse or imminent aggression. Neither occurred. Instead, we watched a system manage its own weaknesses while projecting confidence. Not stable, not spiraling, but operating through controlled deterioration.
Over the past year, I focused on what that looks like inside the system: a military that follows orders but operates with internal caution; a Party apparatus that censors information even from itself; and a leadership model that relies on metrics, discipline, and appearance to sustain authority.
Xinanigans was built to track these patterns. Over the course of 2025, that lens solidified into a clearer architecture—seven domains of governance warfare that explain how China organizes power at home, exports influence abroad, and shapes the strategic environment the US must operate within. That perspective guided everything from PLA internal dynamics to China’s growing role as an exporter of governance models.
What I Saw
I saw governance used as an instrument of pressure. Narrative used as a way to set constraints. Time used as an advantage rather than a variable.
And I watched Xi less as a personality and more as a method—a governance model that expresses itself across multiple domains at once, using administration, psychology, economics, and narrative to produce coherence where reality does not. What matters is not the man but the system he has engineered to endure beyond him.
What I Missed
I also missed things. I underestimated how far internal information controls would spread within the Party. I didn’t expect governance-model exports to Latin America to accelerate as quickly as they did. And I didn’t see how effective Beijing’s posture of “strategic helplessness” would be at a moment when US attention was divided.
These were blind spots in timing and emphasis, not in direction. But they matter. Mapping a system this large means adjusting the picture as it shifts.
What’s Next
In 2026, I’ll be tracking how Xi’s governance method evolves and spreads—not just as policy, but as a full-spectrum system of control. I’m especially interested in where the appeal is less about China itself and more about the structure it offers.
That means examining how different domains of governance warfare interact: how administrative pressure points shape economic incentives, how demographic strategy reinforces narrative infrastructure, how elite co-option travels through planning regimes, and how these dynamics together expand China’s influence abroad.
Xinanigans will stay grounded in the core questions that shape the work:
What signals is Beijing sending?
What stresses is it trying to manage?
Where are the fractures in the system?
How is its governance model being absorbed abroad?
And finally, thank you. The notes you send, the questions you raise, and the encouragement you offer mean more than you probably realize. I’m grateful to have you with me on this path.
V/r,
Erika