Suing a defendant located in mainland China rarely fails on the merits first; it stalls on service of process, the one procedural step most domestic litigators never have to plan around. This playbook maps how Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(f) and 4(h)(2) mesh with the Hague Service Convention, why the Ministry of Justice Central Authority is in practice the only reliable channel, and why China's standing objection to Article 10 shuts off mail, courier, and private-agent service. It walks the Form USM-94 packet, the realistic six-to-eighteen-month timeline, the certified-translation requirements that sink most requests, and court-ordered alternative service by email or messaging app under Rule 4(f)(3) against the backdrop of Water Splash, Inc. v. Menon, 581 U.S. 271 (2017). It covers domestic service on U.S. subsidiaries and agents under Volkswagenwerk v. Schlunk, contractual service designations after Rockefeller v. SinoType, the Article 15 mechanics of defaulting a no-show defendant, the sobering problem of enforcing a U.S. judgment inside China, the sovereign-immunity trap when the defendant is a state entity, and how the Hague Evidence Convention governs discovery. The through-line: do service cleanly so no future court has an easy reason to unwind the result.