THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE:

The real threat posed to China by Rajapaksa's surprising loss, however, is different. This marks the third big Asian election in the last 12 months in which voters have installed a new leader: first in India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi thumped the incumbent Congress Party; then Indonesia, where Joko Widodo, an outsider, won over voters with his record of competence as governor of Jakarta; and now Maithripala Sirisena's upset victory in Sri Lanka. That kind of turnover at the top must give pause to China's Communist Party leaders, who see the mandate of heaven as an institutional birthright.

A look at the map is instructive: As Freedom House notes, "Over the past five years, the Asia-Pacific region has been the only one to record steady gains in political rights and civil liberties." On China's border, autocratic Myanmar has just gone ahead with the first municipal elections in six decades in Yangon, its biggest city, and plans to hold general elections in late 2015. In Taiwan, the ruling Nationalists (who favor closer ties with mainland China) just got a drubbing in local elections. In China's near abroad, Afghanistan's recent election--for all its flaws--also marked a significant step forward for its fledgling democracy. 

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