In a democracy, two resounding election defeats in a matter of months might prompt some soul-searching in the losing camp.
In China, however, a snub at the polls in territories it claims is more a minor setback rather than a sign of a flawed strategy. President Xi Jinping's government showed that yet again in the wake of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen's landslide win Saturday, which came shortly after Hong Kong's pro-democracy forces gave Beijing a black eye in a November election.
"This temporary counter-current is just a bubble under the tide of the times," the official state-run Xinhua News Agency said in a commentary after Tsai's win. Blaming "anti-China political forces in the West" and calling the election a "fluke," it warned that "reunification cannot be stopped by any force or anyone."