Kuala Lampur, Feb. 7 -- China is a country long accustomed to handling big politics. It thinks in decades rather than election cycles, and in structural terms rather than political soundbites.

For this reason, any major electoral victory by Takaichi Sanae should not be misread in Beijing as a deliberate provocation, much less a strategic insult.

China is not a great power driven by one-upmanship; even though it is locked into a systemic rivalry with the US.

It does not recalibrate its grand strategy based on who wins a single election in Washington or Tokyo.

Campaign rhetoric-especially in democratic systems-is understood for what it is: domestic signalling shaped by ideological positioning, factional competition, and coalition arithm...